


The Vacant Apartment

by Storybreather221



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Post Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-09
Updated: 2014-11-14
Packaged: 2017-12-04 18:38:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 19
Words: 38,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/713799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Storybreather221/pseuds/Storybreather221
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been four months since Sherlock's death, and John has spent the majority of it buried in work and determinedly ignoring anything that reminds him of the consulting detective. But when Lestrade approaches him with the mysterious murder of Ronald Adair, John finds that resisting the lure of a case may not be as easy as he thought. And when the Adair murder turns out to be merely a ripple in the greater underground crime scene, John finds someone he wasn't looking for, but desperately wanted to see.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> First foray into a full-length fic in a long time, and a case-fic at that. Hoo boy.
> 
> I'm doing this in part to indulge myself in reunion-imaginings while I wait for season 3, and in part to practice my writing, so if you have a comment or critique about either, please don't hesitate to share it!
> 
> Naturally I do not own the BBC show from which this is inspired, nor do I own the canonical Sherlock Holmes of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Please support the original works, as they are far better than anything I could write here.
> 
>  
> 
> **NOTE: Please see the "Enquiries" chapter if you're confused as to why this does not follow the events of Season 3.**

John felt the back of his jacket dampen rapidly as he walked home from the office in the rain. He really should have known better, but the morning had started out so nicely that he’d deluded himself into thinking that maybe for once he would be able to get through an entire day without needing an umbrella or a raincoat. Bloody stereotypical English weather.

Squinting through the downpour he attempted to hail a cab, but couldn’t spot any on the main road so he kept walking. Luckily the practice was only a few blocks away from his apartment, and he quickened his pace with thoughts of dry clothes and a warm cup of tea awaiting him.

The streets of London were crowded, as they typically were at this hour, and he had to maneuver his way through a group of umbrella-toting business men and women who had gathered at the corner of a crosswalk waiting for the light. By the time he reached his door, he was completely soaked through and shivering slightly. If his fellow co-workers could see him now, they’d poke fun at Doctor-no-nonsense-Watson walking around in the rain in October without a proper coat on during the height of flu season. Well at least he would know exactly how to treat himself if he got sick.

Fingers nearly frozen stiff from the rain and the cold John fumbled opening the front door of the complex. He left his dripping jacket on the stand in the main hall--best to leave it here to dry and come back for it later, rather than drip tiny puddles on the stairwell for people to slip on and break their necks. The removal of the wet coat did not make John any warmer, however, so he hurried up the stairs to the second floor and into his flat.

It was a small place, much like the one he’d lived in temporarily when he had first returned to London. There was a kitchen that was also a living room and a bedroom all rolled into one, complete with a closet that doubled as a bathroom. John thought of it as a nice, modest place. Most people would have thought it claustrophobic. Still, it was more than enough for just one person, and John was sure he would grow to like it, at least until he could save up enough to get a bigger place.

A lot had changed for John Watson in the four months since “the incident.” He’d gotten a new apartment, a new job, met new people, there was a lot of newness. On weekdays he would go through his shifts at the practice and on the weekends he would occasionally catch up with Stamford or another mate at the pub, although most of the time he just felt like staying in. It was an ordinary life, quiet, safe, and incredibly boring. But boring was good, John assured himself. Boring meant not seeing your best friend jump off the roof of a building to his death as you stood helplessly on the sidelines.

John shook his head. _None of that,_ he thought, digging through his dresser for something dry to wear. _You know where that train of thought goes and it’s never anyplace good, so just stop it. Now._

Just stop thinking about it. About the fact that four months ago, Sherlock Holmes had called John from the rooftop of St. Bart’s, confessed to being a fraud and a liar, and jumped to his death onto the pavement three stories below. Four months and the memory was still as sharp and painful as it had always been. The only thing that changed was that John had gotten better at repressing the memories once they threatened to overwhelm him, as he did now, switching his mind over to think instead about the patients he’d seen that day. A couple of colds, one bloke who’d accidentally nailed his hand to a roof shingle, that one had been interesting. A lot of people complaining about headaches and migraines but that was hardly unusual at this time of year when the weather was starting to turn cold and bitter and the people began to follow suit.

Shrugging into a fresh pair of trousers and one of his last clean shirts, John made his way across the room to the tiny stove where his kettle sat waiting for him. He hummed quietly as he went about making his tea without paying much attention to the tune. If he had, he might have recognized it as the reprise of a Bach-inspired masterpiece a certain consulting detective had once decided needed to be composed at three in the morning. While he waited for the kettle to boil, John went to fetch his laptop from the bed, and his limp, which had threatened to come back ever since he’d moved out of 221B Baker Street, made him stumble a bit as he crossed the stained, carpeted floor.

John Watson may have told himself and everyone else that he was doing just fine, but the truth was he was far from it, a fact he wouldn’t fully accept until his life, quite suddenly and certainly without his permission, began to get decidedly unordinary again.

John may have thought he’d left the danger behind long ago, but the battlefield always calls to its soldiers, whether they want to hear it or not.


	2. Investigation

“Alright, that’s it for me,” John called out as he locked up his office for the night. One of the advantages of working for a private practice was always getting to clock out by suppertime, though John wouldn’t have minded the extra hours. He was incredibly thankful for this job, and his work ethic had improved enormously now that he wasn’t chasing criminals around London all night and sleeping during his shifts. “See you tomorrow, Rupert.”

“No you won’t. It’s your day off tomorrow, remember?” Rupert, one of the practice’s other doctors and John’s fellow colleague for the closing shift, smirked as he put away the last few files for the day. “You know what a day off is, right? It’s that special time when you don’t have to come to work and instead get to spend the day sleeping or lounging around watching the telly or even, if you’re really lucky, indulging in a social life.”

“Ha ha,” John said drily. “If Sandra hadn’t asked me--”

“Sandra told you to take a break because you need one, mate,” Rupert said, joining him by the door. John shrugged by way of response and held the door for him to pass through. “Honestly,” Rupert continued, ignoring the open door, “I don’t think you’ve taken a day off once since you’ve started here. You’re obsessed with working.”

“I am not _obsessed_ with it,” John said, very nearly dragging Rupert outside so he could lock up. “I usually have the weekends off.”

“Not by choice,” Rupert shot back. “You always sign up to take someone’s weekend shift if they need it covered, and Sandra said you’ve asked her if you can work Saturdays too.”

“So enthusiasm for the job is a crime now?”

“Not officially, but I’m not saying that, I just . . .” Rupert appeared to be searching for the right words. John waited patiently but his mind had already started to drift back to his apartment. He wondered if there was any good crap telly on tonight. Maybe some idiotic reality show he could shout at.

“It’s like you’re afraid to let yourself do anything else,” Rupert finally said.

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I just worry--”

“Yeah, well don’t,” John snapped, perhaps a bit too loudly but really when would people stop feeling sorry for him and realize that he could take care of himself? “I’m fine, really, but thanks,” he amended, because Rupert was a good man and he was just concerned.

“Alright. Just do me a favor? Tomorrow, sleep in until at least noon, and do something nice for yourself, got it? Relax.”

“Will do,” John smiled and nodded as the two parted ways. John watched as Rupert signaled a passing cab and disappeared around the corner, shifting his weight around and debating what to do next. A moment ago he’d been thinking wistfully of heading to the apartment, but now he felt restless. Maybe he would walk around for a bit and then head back before it got dark.

Without any destination in mind he strolled casually through the streets of London, stopping occasionally to peer into a shop window or watch a group of people pass by. It was nice to be able to shut his brain off for a bit and just enjoy the crisp, October air. It had been a long day at the office but already he felt so much more rela--

“John? John!”

A familiar voice hailed him from down the street, and John looked up to see Greg Lestrade of all people jogging towards him. The sight of the former Detective Inspector stirred up mixed feelings in John, memories of crime scenes, Sherlock in handcuffs, inquiries after the--

 _No,_ John said firmly to himself, and greeted Lestrade with a tight smile.

“My god, I never expected to run into you again,” Lestrade said, gripping John’s hand in a firm shake and clasping his shoulder briefly. “What’s it been, three months?”

“Four,” John said, returning the handshake but leaving it at that. “How have you been?”

In all honesty, the man looked like a mess. He’d started growing a beard which did not flatter his face, and he seemed to have put on a bit of weight since John had seen him last. He was clearly being overworked and hadn’t had a holiday in awhile, judging by his pale skin and the dark circles under his eyes. All in all, the demotion didn’t seem to be sitting well with the detective.

“Bloody awful, to tell the truth,” Lestrade said, confirming John’s suspicions. “I had to go through an investigation at the Yard awhile back, dunno if you heard--”

“I did,” John said, to prevent him from going into details about the subject of that investigation. “I think there was an article in the papers.”

“Yeah well, I suppose I should be thankful the press didn’t make a bigger deal about it,” Lestrade said. “Especially considering all the hell they raised about--” he cut himself off suddenly. “Bit chilly out here tonight, isn’t it? Fancy a drink? I know a good pub just down the way.”

John didn’t particularly want to extend his conversation with the former Inspector, but he couldn’t think of a way of saying so without sounding rude. And besides, the man had been a advocate of Sherlock’s once, even more so after “the incident,” which had surprised John. Probably had cost the man his position as well, but he’d stood by him anyway. Lestrade was a good man.

“Yeah, alright,” John said, and followed Lestrade down the street.

The pub Lestrade led them to was busy but not over-crowded considering the hour. They sat at a booth in the corner and Lestrade treated them to two pints at his insistence. After all, he said, it’s not every day you run into a “blast from the past.”

They kept the conversation casual. John told Lestrade about his work with the practice and Lestrade spoke about how he hadn’t had much to do after his demotion to Detective Constable, and that even that small title had been difficult to hang on to. When the Chief Superintendent had found out how much Lestrade had let Sherlock in on his cases, he’d wondered if Lestrade was even worthy of the designation ‘Detective.’

“Stuck-up old toff,” Lestrade said, taking a swig from his mug. “I’m thinking about going my own way one of these days. Not having to work under the system anymore, maybe open up my own firm.”

“Maybe,” John, who was enjoying himself more than he had thought he would, said. “At least you wouldn’t have to answer to that berk of a Chief Superintendent.”

“Donovan said you decked him in the beak once,” Lestrade said, raising his eyebrows. “What did he do to get you to commit a felony and what higher power saved your law-breaking skin?”

“It’s a bit of a blur I’m afraid, Inspector. Sorry, _Constable_.” John chuckled and Lestrade, after a moment’s pause, joined in.

“I swear, sometimes you sound just like him,” he said, shaking his head.

“Like who?” John asked, raising his glass to his lips.

“Sherlock.”

John slowly lowered his hand, suddenly more interested in looking at the contents of his glass than in drinking them. Lestrade cleared his throat awkwardly, and John hoped he would brush it off and move on.

“Look, John--”

“Don’t,” John’s voice was firm, obstinate. Lestrade opened his mouth to say something else, but then changed his mind and took a long drink from his mug instead. John watched him, reminding himself that only a few moments ago he’d been having a fairly good time and there was no need to spoil that now by going on a tirade and storming out of the pub. How was it that one mention of Sherlock made him want to either punch something or go back to the apartment and stare at the wall for the rest of the night?

“Got this case at work now,” Lestrade said, cutting into John’s brooding, and he gratefully latched onto something to think about other than Sherlock. “A man was found dead in his room with a bullet through his head. Seems like a straight-forward suicide case but I don’t know, something about it seems strange to me.”

“Yeah, like what?” John said. It was amazing how many feelings Lestrade could invoke in him just by talking about a case. Memories of his old life overwhelmed him, and John felt longing and regret win in the fight for the dominant emotions.

“Well for one thing, the door was locked from the inside even though no one was home at the time,” Lestrade went on. “And for another, the man had no known enemies or debts, at least that we’re aware of, that might drive him to take his own life. The Yard is ready to dismiss it but I can’t seem to get it out of my head. I don’t know if, well maybe if you’ve got nothing on, you would come down and have a look at the crime scene?”

“Me?” John asked, trying to stifle the excitement that had flared up at the ex-Inspector’s words. “But haven’t you got a forensics team for that?”

“The usual team is busy on another case. Apparently this isn’t deemed important enough for further investigation,” Lestrade said, and John felt a surge of sympathy towards the fallen detective who was stuck with cases not even important enough for the likes of Anderson. “And besides, they’re not willing to put the extra effort in to check out a hunch. I thought maybe, given your history, you might find something to back me up with.”

_I swear, sometimes you sound just like him._

“Greg,” John said carefully, his newfound excitement fading. “I’m not . . . I’m not him.”

“No, you’re not,” Lestrade agreed. “You’re John Watson, the man crazy enough to stand by Sherlock through everything these past few years have thrown at him and loyal enough to never waver for a second. I can’t think of a better man to have at my side. And who knows? Maybe he’s rubbed off on you.”

John was quiet for a long time. He was interested, there was no denying that. The promise of adventure, the thrill of danger, oh yes he wanted it very much. But was he ready to return to the war? Perhaps he should just go back to the apartment, maybe rent a movie for his day off and wait until he could go back to work the next day.

_God no._

“Actually, as it so happens, I have the day off tomorrow,” John said, trying to appear nonchalant about the whole matter when in reality his insides were doing the mamba. “I suppose I could spare some time.”

Lestrade grinned and gave John a look that said he knew how badly John was trying to contain his excitement.

“Fantastic. Can you meet me at Park Lane at nine tomorrow morning?”

“Absolutely.”

As John bid the detective goodnight and walked back to his apartment, his mind already racing over different theories about the case (Lestrade assured him he would provide full details in the morning), he couldn’t help but think that it probably wasn’t all that decent to get so happy over a murder.

Then a familiar, amused voice spoke from inside his head.

_Who cares about decent? The game, John, is on!_


	3. Baffled

To say that John woke up early that morning would be inaccurate, largely because he’d been unable to fall asleep at all. Instead, he’d dozed fitfully for a few hours before giving it up and choosing to spend the remainder of the night looking up information about the case. Lestrade hadn’t said much, but he had mentioned a name--Ronald Adair.

He had already thrown out the paper from the day before, but luckily he had the instantaneous availability of the internet. Or so he thought. Frustratingly enough, the web yielded very little information about the unfortunate Adair--only that he was the son of a high-ranking official in Australia and that he had been found shot in his study two evenings ago. A little more digging revealed that he had been a regular member of the Victory Services Club since 1993, but that was all. John leaned back against the wall, rubbing his eyes and contemplating trying to go back to bed.

_Really, John, your resolution for information-gathering astounds me._

Sherlock’s voice had been talking to him since he’d left Lestrade at the pub. At first, John had wondered if that meant he’d finally flipped the lid and gone mental, but then he decided he was better off not knowing and instead had classified the voice as a projection of his own subconscious due to the familiarity of thinking about a case. His therapist probably would have suggested he write a blog about how it felt having your dead best friend lecture you on crime-investigation techniques.

Write about it, express yourself. That seemed to be her answer to everything. One of the first things she’d suggested after “the incident” was to take the time and write everything out. But John had no desire to ever think about that moment again, and it was bad enough that it was forced on him in his dreams. Besides, writing a blog had helped cause everything from four months ago. It had been his blog that had gotten Sherlock popular enough to warrant media attention, to throw him into the merciless spotlight of the public eye. After two weeks, John stopped going to see his therapist.

_Running away from a problem you deem irresolvable? That’s not the John Watson I know._

John bit back a retort. If he started responding to the voice, he would definitely have to check himself into a looney bin.

He kept browsing the web for another hour or so, then slipped into semi-consciousness until the sun peeking through the half-drawn curtains awoke him. Excitement flushed out the fatigue and John got up to wash up and get ready to head out. Half an hour later he’d donned his jacket and was about to leave when he paused in the doorway, wondering if he ought to bring anything. Sherlock usually had his magnifying lens with him when he was studying a crime scene, but John didn’t have anything like that. After a moment’s thought he walked over to the kitchen-portion of the room and grabbed a couple of ziplock bags, just in case he found anything that needed to be analyzed further. It’s what Sherlock would have done.

_It’s one thing to know something needs analyzing, John. It’s quite another to actually do it._

Well, he’d figure it out. Somehow. After all, he’d spent countless hours helping Sherlock in the lab at St. Bart’s, he was bound to have picked something up.

_Knowledge via osmosis. How novel._

_Shut up, Sherlock,_ John thought. He was only crazy if he said it out loud, right?

 

When John stepped out of the cab onto Park Lane he spotted Lestrade waiting for him in front of a rather impressive-looking house. Curtains were drawn across its many windows, and John noted a balcony on the second floor.

 _Killer could have gotten in through there,_ he thought. _Wouldn’t be the first time an assassin used a window to get in._ John shook his head. He knew he shouldn’t be forming any conclusions until he had the evidence in front of him. Fit your story to match the evidence, not the other way around, that’s what Sherlock had always done.

“John,” Lestrade greeted him with a worn but genuine smile. “Shall we get started then? I’ve got a few hours before I have to be at the station. I’m technically working off the clock here, but don’t tell anyone or I’ll probably be looking at other means of employment.”

“You don’t have to worry,” John said as Lestrade led him inside. “Scotland Yard and I aren’t exactly on the best of terms either since my disagreement with the Chief Superintendent.”

They walked down a narrow hallway and up a carpeted flight of stairs to the second floor. John whistled as they passed underneath the crystal chandelier. That thing alone could probably pay his rent for half a year. Lestrade caught John staring.

“Yeah it’s safe to say the guy was relatively well off, financially,” he said, nodding at the chandelier. “He was a regular donator to several well-known charities, never really stirred up the media in any scandals, the perfect boy scout, it seems.”

Lestrade opened one of the doors on the landing revealing a gentleman’s study. A floor to ceiling bookcase covered one wall, and framed photographs and newspaper clippings decorated its opposite. The morning breeze blew in through the window directly across from them, underneath which stood a mahogany desk cluttered with papers and books. And across that desk . . .

“That’s where the body was found,” Lestrade said, indicating the smeared chalk lines on the desk’s surface where Adair had been sprawled face-down two days ago with a bullet in his head. “Supposed to get this all cleared up today but I managed to stall for a few hours.” He stopped and looked expectantly at John.

“What?” John said. Did he expect him to just rattle off the solution after a few seconds of being at the crime scene?

“Anything jump out at you?” Lestrade asked hopefully.

Apparently so.

“Look, I told you last night, I’m not your replacement consultant detective,” John said, a little testily.

“Well I just thought maybe you’d picked something up from working with him so much.”

“You worked with him for five years, did you pick anything up?”

Lestrade had the good graces to look abashed. John sighed, they didn’t have much time as it was, and he didn’t want to spend it arguing. He approached the desk, staring at the partially rubbed outline of the body but nothing came to him.

“Tell me more about this man, Ronald Adair,” John said, hoping Lestrade would divulge some detail that would spark something in his mind. Lestrade folded his arms over his chest and leaned against the doorframe.

“Adair was living with his mother and younger sister, who’d come in from Australia for the mother’s surgery, an eye operation or something. The two of them were out on the evening he was killed and went up to his study to check on him when they got back, only he wasn’t answering and the door was locked. When they finally managed to break in they found him collapsed on his desk with a bullet through his brain.”

John shuffled through some of the papers on the desk. He found a handful of banknotes and checks under a stack of letterheads, as well as a single sheet of paper with sums scrawled across it in slanted handwriting. John frowned and examined it more closely. Each amount of money was attached to a name. John looked but didn’t recognize any of them--Milner, Moran, Balmoral--nothing rang any bells.

 _Sherlock would have known who they were,_ John thought. Then he frowned. _No, he would have looked them up on his phone and made it out like he knew who they were all along. He wouldn’t have seemed half as clever as he was if he didn’t have access to Google._

_Even half as clever would have been infinitely more intelligent than most people._

John shook his head to clear his thoughts. He turned back to Lestrade, who had been watching him, brows creased.

“Did he have any hobbies? Habits? He was a member of the Victory Services Club for quite awhile. Is there anything else he engaged in on a regular basis?”

“Ah, his sister mentioned that he liked to play cards with some of his mates on Thursday nights. A few of them were from the Victory Services Club as well.”

John looked at the piece of paper again. Well that would explain the numbers. Perhaps Mr. Adair had been settling some bets before his death. And a man of such considerable wealth would go through a lot of money--these were not small figures.

“Did he have any enemies? Any bitter families members or relations gone wrong, that sort of thing?”

Lestrade considered for a moment.

“Well he recently broke up his engagement, but the mother said it had been a mutual thing. And as far as we known he had no known enemies.”

“A man with no enemies doesn’t just wind up shot in his study.”

“Unless he did it himself.”

“But you don’t think so.”

Lestrade shrugged and scratched at the back of his head.

“All the evidence would suggest it was suicide. The door was locked from the inside, a potential killer could have gone by the window if the twenty-foot drop didn’t kill him, but there are no signs on the ground that anyone landed there. But the thing that bugs me is that there was no weapon.”

John blinked.

“He didn’t have a gun on him?”

“No, searched the whole place but couldn’t find anything that would have caused his death. And his profile didn’t match up either. His investments in the stocks were doing well and he was a happy man, according to his mum and sister. Something just seems off.”

John agreed with Lestrade, but even after going through all the papers, the desk drawers, and even the books on the bookshelf, John still couldn’t find an indication of anything pointing to murder. He did find a small smear of gray powder near the left chalked hand, which he scooped into one of the ziplock bags he’d brought. But he couldn’t tell if it was powder from a gun or ash from a cigarette. Sighing, he massaged his temples in frustration. A twinge of pain shot through his right leg.

What had he expected, really? That he would enter the crime scene and instantly solve the mystery? That all of his experience watching Sherlock solve crimes was enough to justify himself as a qualified detective? Maybe, but even realistically he’d expected to be able to figure _something_ out. But no, it turns out he was so used to Sherlock telling him the answers that he was completely incapable of deducing any of them for himself.

“John?”

“Sorry, Greg, I don’t know. I thought I could . . . I’m sorry.”

“Well don’t beat yourself up about it, mate,” Lestrade said, and John felt a sudden urge to punch the pity out of the ex-inspector’s eyes. “I’ve been digging into this guy’s background and accounts and I still can’t find anything that would suggest--”

“I should get going,” John said, walking towards the door and trying not to pay any mind to the slight limp he did it with.

“Well maybe if--”

“I can’t take his place, Greg!”

“No one’s asking you--”

“I’m sorry, I can’t help you.”

John brushed by Lestrade and made for the stairs. He just wanted to go back to the apartment, maybe call in at the office and see if he could come in for a few hours--

“Even Sherlock asked for your help, which makes you nothing short of a miracle. I never saw him rely on anyone else as much as he relied on you.”

John paused at the top of the stairs. Lestrade pressed on.

“Look why don’t we both just stop pretending that you didn’t light up like a kid at Christmas when I told you about this case. You miss this, and that’s why you’re burying yourself with that practice. Yes, you are no Sherlock Holmes. I don’t think there could ever exist anyone else remotely like him, not even that uptight brother of his. So stop focusing so much on how you’re not him and think more about how he wasn’t _you_.”

John was taken aback but slightly touched. People had always seen him as Sherlock’s reluctant sidekick, he’d forgotten about his own merits that he brought to the work. And besides, there was one thing that he actually _could_ do better than Sherlock.

“Do you know where the body is being kept?” John asked.

“It’s over in the morgue at St. Bart’s. You want to take a look at it?” Lestrade replied, coming over to join him.

“Well, I am a doctor. I might be able to find something that will point the way to your murderer.”

“I’ll follow you then.”

And together the two men departed the house and headed out into the day.


	4. Examination

The cab ride over to St. Bart’s was a strange one for John, mostly because after he’d finished his phone call with Molly to have everything ready for them, Lestrade actually struck up a conversation. John was so used to Sherlock using this time to think or text or do something to further his progress on a case that hearing another voice in the cab was very strange to him. And while having a normal conversation for once was nice, John did miss the way he used to watch the detective as he fit the pieces of the puzzle together in his head.

“How is Molly? You’ve kept in touch with her?” John asked as the cab paused at a red light.

“More or less. I still need to make the occasional trip to the morgue for an assignment, a bit more now that I’m lower down on the Yard’s food chain.”

“How has she been holding up these past few months?” John hadn’t seen the pathologist since the funeral. She’d seemed to be coping alright then, but John knew how smitten with Sherlock she’d been. He probably should have checked in with her afterwards, offered to take her out for coffee or something, but he’d had his own issues to deal with at the time. Still, he should have at least called her.

“Fine, last time I saw her,” Lestrade said. “A bit twitchy, but she’s always been like that, if you know what I mean. Good girl though, always had a solid head on her shoulders. Now if I could just keep her from making those corpse jokes.”

John smiled. Molly might be a little awkward sometimes (well, most of the time), but she could always be counted on for those late hours in the lab. If only Sherlock had appreciated her a bit more, the man had had so few friends as it was, and even less that he would admit to having.

“Do you ever see anyone from the old days?” Lestrade asked. “Molly or Sherlock’s brother . . .?

Mycroft. There was a vicious train of thought John didn’t dare delve into. He blamed a lot of people for what had happened, and Mycroft was right in the top three.

“I see Mrs. Hudson for the occasional cuppa,” John said, although this was only partly true. He _had_ visited Mrs. Hudson every week or so after he’d moved out of Baker Street shortly after the funeral, but their meetings had grown less and less frequent as time had gone on and John tried to bury himself in the practice. Truth be told, he hadn’t seen her in about a month. John felt a small prickle of guilt at that realization. Mrs. Hudson had always taken such good care of them, and she had been so fond of Sherlock.

_I don’t have friends, I’ve just got one._

_Even you weren’t that obtuse,_ John thought. _You knew there were people who cared about you and believed in you. So why--?_

“Here we are,” Lestrade said, jolting John out of his thoughts as the cab slowed to a halt outside the hospital. He pulled his thoughts out of the past and focused them on what was important at that moment--the case.

 

“John! It’s so wonderful to see you again,” Molly said as he and Lestrade entered the morgue. The unfortunate Adair was already laid out on the table for them, a white sheet covering his body. “Detective Lestrade told me you were working on a case together, it must be so fun to do this sort of thing again. Not that dead bodies are fun, I just meant--”

“It’s good to see you too, Molly,” John said, cutting off her embarrassed stuttering. Molly gave him a small smile and turned to greet Lestrade. “Seems like they’re running you ragged at the Yard . . .”

A gentle hum of nostalgia filled the air as John looked around. The stainless steel tables, the white walls, and some, poor dead bloke lying in the middle of the room. It was just as if he were on a case again.

 _I_ am _on a case again,_ John reminded himself. _So I’d better get to work._

“What did you find in the autopsy?” he asked, approaching the covered figure on the table. Molly broke away from her conversation with Lestrade to join him.

“Everything that was mentioned in the police reports,” she said, pulling back the sheet to uncover Adair’s face. “The cause of death was a single bullet to the head. There was no exit wound.”

Adair had been a fairly handsome man in life, with light, blonde hair and a boyish-looking face that even death couldn’t manage to age completely.

 _So young,_ John couldn’t help but think. The news articles he’d found online said the man was forty but he didn’t look a day over twenty-nine.

 _Unless you plan on personally carving the man’s tombstone dates, I suggest you focus on what is actually relevant to this case,_ Sherlock’s voice nagged at him.

John turned his attention to the wound itself. The crime scene may not have yielded much to his untrained eyes, but this, this he could do. This was his specialty.

The bullet had entered Adair’s head through the near-center of his forehead and from there, well to put it bluntly it had made a right mess of his skull. But there was something off here. An entry wound of that size shouldn’t have been able to cause that much extensive damage.

“Has the forensics team identified the bullet?” John asked. “Or are they at least working to?”

“In the technical sense, yes,” Lestrade said, but his tone of voice made John look up with a raised eyebrow.

“And in the actual sense?”

“No,” Lestrade said. “Unfortunately for our man Adair here there was another incident over in Berkshire a few nights ago. Two men disappeared from their hotel room and haven’t been heard from since. The Yard is focusing all of its resources on that instead, since save for me everyone has written this case off as just another suicide, and therefore not worth the time investigating.”

_Idiots._

John wasn’t sure if it was Sherlock’s voice or his own that time.

“I’ve seen this type of wound before,” John said, leaning over further to peer more closely at the bullet hole. “Did you see the bullet when they took it out?”

“Briefly yeah, when I delivered it to the station with my report,” Lestrade said.

“What did it look like, can you remember?”

“Well,” Lestrade rubbed at the back of his head, his eyes rolling upwards to stare at the ceiling as he thought back. “I remember it was a weird-looking bullet. Sort of, like half of it had exploded and peeled back. Like a flower.”

John nodded.

“An expanding revolver bullet,” he said, straightening up and facing the others, who were looking at him completely perplexed. John felt a brief surge of pride at being the most knowledgable person in the room for once. No wonder Sherlock loved showing off. “It’s a type of bullet the country developed in the 1890s, originally to be used by the military in India. The nose of the bullet is designed to expand upon impact, creating that flower-like shape that you saw, Greg. It causes a lot more damage than a normal bullet, increasing the likelihood of a kill-shot.”

“I’ve never seen anything like that before,” Lestrade said, frowning.

“Probably because its use during wartime was banned at the end of the nineteenth-century,” John said. “It fell out of use in the military, although you will see it occasionally in independent groups or individual assassins, but it’s gotten rarer as time’s gone on.”

“So some enthusiast for antiques used it blow this guys brains out?” Lestrade asked. “Bit of an overkill isn’t it? With a crack shot like that, the man would have been dead no matter what type of bullet hit him.”

John frowned. Lestrade was right. This kind of aim could only have come from a practiced, well-trained hand. A true marksman. So why use this particular type of bullet? To ensure that there would be no need for a second one?

Or maybe it was to send a message. Only a select few people would recognize it, was that why the murderer had chosen such a specific weapon?

“Lestrade, can you run background checks on some of Adair’s acquaintances?” John asked. “There was a list on his desk of people he’d been exchanging money with, probably from gambling. Start with that, and let me know what you find. I’m not sure how much influence you have at the Yard right now--”

“Not much, but enough to get the job done,” Lestrade said. “Might take a few days though, I’ll have to keep it quiet. I’ve already gotten the official warning to file this case away and leave it be.”

“Right, well do what you can. Molly,” John turned to her, “do you think you could analyze this for me?” He pulled the bag of ash he’d taken from Adair’s study out of his jacket pocket and handed it over. Molly peered through the plastic, eyes squinting slightly. “I’m not sure what it is, or if it’s important, but it’s probably a good idea to identify it. The smallest detail could be significant.”

“Amazing,” Molly said softly, but she was looking at John now. “You sound just like Sherlock. Oh, I’m sorry!” She covered her mouth with her hand, looking horrified. “I didn’t mean--it’s just that he’s always so direct and, I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay,” John said, though his throat felt dry all of a sudden. Why did everyone keep comparing him to Sherlock? “But I’m not as strict a taskmaster as he was, I know you’ve got work from your actual job to deal with. Just, when you get a chance?”

“Of course,” Molly nodded.

“It looks like some kind of ash,” John said. “If so, I know a great website that identifies over 200 different types.”

They grinned at each other and John remembered why he’d always liked Molly, even if she was a bit awkward sometimes. She too, appreciated Sherlock’s eccentricities.

“Well, I’ve got to run,” Lestrade said, checking the clock on his phone. “I’m expected at the station in about fifteen. I’ll have those backgrounds to you as soon as I can, John. I was right then, wasn’t I though? This was murder.”

“Definitely,” John said. Lestrade grinned.

“Knew I was on to something. Always trust your gut.”

And with a quick nod to the both of them, Lestrade hurried out of the morgue.

 _What a ridiculous notion,_ Sherlock’s voice said. _Cases are solved with the mind, not the stomach. The influence of instinct in success is highly overvalued._

 _Instinct is just the thing that tells you something is wrong before your brain can figure out what it is,_ John retorted.

“So is today your day off? Usually you’re so busy with the private practice,” Molly startled John out of his thoughts. He had to stop drifting off like that.

“Yeah, I’ve got the day to myself. Not entirely sure what to do with that much free time. This helps though,” he gestured vaguely at the corpse. Molly smiled.

“Um, you’re welcome to stay if you want. I’ve got a couple of autopsies to do, and they can be really interesting, almost like working out a puzzle--.”

“Er, thanks, Molly, really, but I think I’ll take off. I’ve been meaning to drop in on Mrs. Hudson and now that I’ve got the afternoon free--”

“Oh! Of course! Sorry, that wasn’t terribly classy of me was it? Go on, I’ll call you later about the sample.”

“Right, thanks,” John said. The bit about visiting Mrs. Hudson had been a lie to spare Molly’s feelings, but now that he thought about it John realized he actually wanted to see their old landlady. It had been awhile, and she might be interested to hear about the case.

It wasn’t until he’d hailed a taxi cab and given the driver directions to Baker Street that John wondered how Molly had known about his busy schedule at the practice. He hadn’t been in touch with her since the funeral, and he hadn’t even been looking at jobs then. Had Lestrade said something?

 _Focus on the case, John._ Sherlock’s voice said. _Remember, the tiniest detail could be important, you don’t want to overlook anything._

 _Yeah,_ John thought, even though he had the feeling that he _was_ overlooking something important Molly had said. Or was it something she had done?

Ah well, no point in dwelling on it, John decided, and he spent the rest of the ride thinking about bullets and gambling debts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EDIT: Thank you to **marye** for pointing out that Molly is a pathologist, not a mortician. :)


	5. Landlady

When the cab pulled to a stop outside of Baker Street, John didn’t give himself the chance to hesitate. Like plunging into a freezing tub of water, he immediately stepped out and walked straight up to the front door, determinedly not looking at their--at apartment 221B’s windows. It felt strange to be outside this doorstep after nearly a month of distance, and John found himself thinking wistfully of the familiarity of casually drinking tea in the afternoon with a skull on one side and a bullet-ridden wall on the other. The passage of four months had done nothing to ease the ache of nostalgia and longing he felt being here again. Amazing thing, the human heart, that clings so stubbornly to the things the mind tries so hard to forget.

_Your poetry hasn’t improved, John._

_Neither have your smart remarks,_ John retorted, and gave the brass knocker a sharp _tap._

He didn’t have to wait long. It was almost as though Mrs. Hudson had been expecting him--her face when she pulled open the door held nothing but warmth and that nurturing element most elderly women seem to adopt at some time or other.

“John, dear, what a lovely surprise!” she said, enveloping him in a small but firm hug. John grinned and for a moment the world was right again. Mrs. Hudson was still keeping things running at Baker Street and England was still standing. He’d missed this feeling.

_Home._

“Goodness, I was starting to think I’d never see you on my doorstep again,” Mrs. Hudson said, holding him at arm’s length and giving him a once over. “Are you eating properly? Never was sure you two would be able to manage without me bringing over thumbless biscuits every now and then.”

“I’m sorry, I should have come by sooner.”

“Never you mind, dear, you’re here now and that’s what counts,” Mrs. Hudson said. “Come on, there’re crumpets in the cupboard and I’ve just put on the kettle.”

John followed her inside and into her small flat on the ground floor, looking up the stairs as they passed by. He wondered if the ninth step still creaked.

Mrs. Hudson settled him down at the table and they soon settled into a casual chat about the abysmal weather, John’s practice, Mrs. Hudson’s hip (it was getting worse, but she refused to purchase a walker), and generally everything two people trying to avoid a distasteful subject are apt to talk about instead. Unfortunately, a distasteful subject is bound to come up sooner or later, no matter how hard you try to avoid it.

“I’ve finally had an offer for the flat upstairs,” Mrs. Hudson said, smiling but with worry behind her eyes.

“Have you?” John said quietly. He’d thought of the place as theirs for so long it was difficult to imagine anyone else living in it. “From who?”

“I haven’t met the man, I’ve only spoken to him on the phone. Russian, I think. He called me about two weeks ago to enquire about it. Settled right away, didn’t even try to negotiate the price.”

“That’s great,” John said. He knew Mrs. Hudson had given Sherlock a discount on the rent, and she’d never pestered them about late payments when money was tight. She’d always looked after them, especially Sherlock.

_She’s just my landlady, John._

_No she isn’t, you idiot._

“I expect you’ll need help moving everything out of the flat?” John said. He didn’t particularly want to help take out Sherlock’s things, but he felt it would be rude not to offer. For a fairly non-materialistic man, Sherlock had accumulated an alarming amount of stuff over the years.

“Well, the funny thing is, the man renting the place told me I could keep everything the way it was.”

“He fancies bullet-wallpaper and eyeball ice cubes, does he?”

“He hasn’t even seen the place yet. He just said he’d like to use it for storage. I expect he’ll stop by sometime this week.”

This slightly mollified John, but he still felt strange about someone else being in the flat, which was silly really. He certainly wasn’t using it, someone may as well.

“Well, as long as he pays regularly, I’m happy for you,” he said, hoping that Mrs. Hudson would move on to something else.

“Have you been to visit him, lately?”

John didn’t need to ask for clarification to know who she was talking about, but he hadn’t been to Sherlock’s grave since that one time after the funeral and he had no intentions of returning. He couldn’t, he just couldn’t face that again. Sherlock’s name etched on the tombstone, the only remaining testament of what should have been a lifetime of dedication and passion for his work. His legacy.

_It’s only a stone in the ground. Nothing to be afraid of._

_I’m not afraid of it._

_Then why are you avoiding it?_

_Because I hate it,_ John thought. He did. He hated that grave and everything it stood for, the painful, undeniable truth that not even Sherlock could live forever. He hated it, because it reminded him of what he had lost, and more importantly, how he was ashamed of how much that loss crippled him. He tried not to think about it, but John knew he was only a shadow now. A shell. A cane without an owner.

_You never needed that cane._

Hadn’t he? Before he’d met Sherlock, he had been shattered, lame. Now he was even worse off, because he had tasted what it felt like to live again and he knew how good things had been. He wished he had known it then.

“John?”

“Sorry. I’ve been losing myself in my own head recently. What were you saying?”

“It’s . . . it’s nothing dear.”

They sat in silence, the happy scene disturbed. It was too much, John had had enough.

“I should get going,” he said, getting to his feet. “Thanks so much for the tea and the chat, Mrs. Hudson, it was lovely.”

“Oh, you have to leave? So soon?” Mrs. Hudson looked sad as she watched John gather himself at the door.

“I’ve got a few errands to run,” he lied. “But this was really very nice,” he reassured her, trying to say without words that he did enjoy her company, he just couldn’t be here anymore with Sherlock’s absence hanging over him.

“Do feel free to stop by any time,” Mrs. Hudson said, following him to the door. “This place has been so quiet without you.” _Without the both of you,_ was what she really meant, John knew, but bless her she didn’t say it.

“Of course, we’ll have to do this again soon,” John said.

“I mean it, dear, any time at all.” Mrs. Hudson lingered at the door, staring after him as though it would be the last time they saw each other. John felt another wave of guilt hit him. Perhaps she was struggling just as much as he was. She was alone now too.

“Why don’t I stop by next Tuesday, around three?” John said. Mrs. Hudson’s face brightened, the corners of her eyes crinkling as she smiled.

“Yes, that sounds lovely. Do take care, John.”

“I will,” John said. He stepped out onto the curb, and as he didn’t have anywhere else to go, he decided to head back to his apartment. Maybe he would watch some telly, fulfill his promise to Rupert to relax. As he passed the neighboring cafe, he couldn’t help but glance up at the windows to 221B. For a brief moment, he thought he saw a silhouette peering out from the edge of the frame. Then he blinked and it was gone. John felt angry at the tiny speck of hope that had flared inside him at the sight of the figure. It was ridiculous, really. A momentary illusion brought on by seeing the apartment again and his conversation with Mrs. Hudson.

Sherlock was dead, and dead men don’t take up residence in their old flats.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's a bit rushed, but I wanted to get something out before I left for the week.
> 
> If you liked it, leave a comment! Even just a few words brightens up my day. :)


	6. Illusion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoops, thought I had posted this one already.

John awoke to the sounds of footsteps downstairs. Instantly awake and tense, he quickly went through a few possibilities--Mrs. Hudson come to straighten up, Lestrade to talk about the case--but neither of them seemed likely to break into the flat at this early hour. An intruder then. Armed? Possibly, he would have to be careful, his gun was still locked away downstairs.

With the silent caution from his days in the army, John crept out of bed and made his way down the stairs, barefoot and only wearing his pajama bottoms. From his vantage point he could see part of the living room but no sign of another person. John felt a slight chill brush through him and he shivered.

So they had got in through the window. Another climber? Or perhaps someone new. John thought about Adair, murdered in his study by an open window. He wished he had something in his hand.

Suddenly the notes of a plucked violin string drifted in through the open doorway and John’s worry was replaced by rage. They had taken out the violin. Sherlock’s violin.

John leapt out from within the doorway to confront the intruder, ready to attack whoever it was with his bare hands for touching Sherlock’s things. No one could touch them. Not now that their rightful owner had gone.

Except . . .

John froze mid-charge, every thought suspended as he stared at the impossible sight before him.

Sherlock was standing in their living room.

“Sherlock . . .”

The man’s back was to John, facing the window, but there was no mistaking that tall figure with dark, curly hair peeking over an upturned coat collar.

“Sherlock!”

Sherlock did not turn around, but continued to stare out the window, his violin held loosely in his long, pale fingers.

“You bloody--how did--how long--?”

John couldn't seem to articulate a complete sentence. Joy, anger, confusion, hurt, all waged war within him as he stared at his friend, miraculously returned from the grave.

“You're alive. Sherlock you're really alive,” John said, and it was as though the guilt and pain of everything he had gone through in the past few months was lifted instantly from him. Sherlock was alive, he hadn't killed him after all.

But still he did not turn around to face John.

“I don't understand.”

“What?” John started at the sound of Sherlock’s voice, its deep yet soft tone reverberating in the flat.

“I don't understand, John.”

“ _You_ don't understand? My god how do you think _I_ feel? This had better be one hell of an explanation, Sherlock, I can tell you that.”

Sherlock said nothing, and now John felt another chill creep over him, but he could see past Sherlock’s thin frame that the window was not open.

“I don't understand, why didn't you save me, John?”

John’s throat went very dry.

“What?”

And at last Sherlock turned to face him, and John’s happiness turned to complete horror as he beheld his friend’s blood-covered face, his blank eyes staring at John and yet at the same time seeing nothing at all.

“Why did you let me fall, John?”

“No!”

John awoke with a strangled yell, drenched in warm sweat and shaking. He struggled to find breath as he looked around himself. He was back in his own apartment and the digital clock by his bedside read 4:21 am. Then he remembered the dream. Being back at Baker Street. And Sherlock covered in blood and standing before him asking why, why, why.

“Dammit.” John fell back against the pillow, hands pressed to his eyes as if he could drive them back into his skull and unsee it all. As though if he were blind he would be able to erase the image of his friend’s corpse from where it was seared into his memory. “Dammit, dammit, dammit . . .”

His entire body trembled as he tried to steady himself. He hasn't had one that vivid in weeks. He had thought those nightmares were finally over. It was the case, that damn case that kept drudging up all these old memories when he'd thought he'd had them successfully buried. Another man may have taken it as a sign to abandon the case altogether. The strain was too much, he couldn’t handle it anymore.

John Watson decided he would do whatever it took to solve it.

 

All throughout his shift, John could barely focus on his patients. His mind was too busy racing, contemplating explanation after explanation. It wasn't until he tried to use a stethoscope to take a patients pulse that he decided to firmly put the matter out of his mind until after work.

“You manage to score yourself a date tonight, John?” Rupert asked as John hurried to collect his things and clock out.

“No, why?” John asked, only bothering to stuff one arm into his coat sleeve before heading towards the door.

“Because usually when I tell you your shift is over you look at me like I just asked you to murder your own dog.”

“Has anyone told you how funny you are? Seriously, you ought to become a comedian, the medical profession is beneath you.”

“Right. Well, whoever she is, she must be some girl to make you want to get out of here so badly.”

 _I’ll be sure to tell Adair’s corpse that you approve,_ John thought drily. Hmm, that was probably a bit not good.

_You're dwelling on trivialities again, John. There's work to do._

_Right,_ John thought, and with a hurried wave at Rupert he left the office.


	7. Enmity

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally had time to sit down and write this. And actually gave some consideration to the plot, which is always helpful.

John was halfway to St. Bart’s when Molly called him on his mobil. She’d been able to take a look at the mysterious powder John had given her that afternoon and identified it as the ash of an Opus X A cigar.

“It’s very expensive, usually running at fifty one pounds or more. It’s also one of the larger brands of cigars at 9.2 inches on average with a 43 ring,” Molly said, sounding as if she were reading from bullet points. “Most people have to order them individually, it’s not sold commonly in ordinary cigar stores.”

Alright, so now he had a little more information. If only he knew what to do with it. John wished he had a pen on him so he could write these details down. He’d ask Molly to repeat it when he got to the morgue.

“That’s, wow that’s impressive, Molly,” John said. “You managed to get all of that information pretty quickly.”

“Well, you know,” Molly’s voice rose slightly like it did when she was nervous about something. “I found a really helpful reference.”

“Everything alright?”

“Yes, yes! Just, busy at work. Lots of bodies to go through.”

“Speaking of which, I was thinking about taking another look at Adair, maybe I’ll find something I didn’t spot before.”

“Oh, John, I’m sorry,” Molly said. “I’ve already released the body to a funeral home. You know I can’t keep them for very long, they need them for arrangements but if I’d known you wanted to look at it again I could have at least taken photographs--”

“That’s alright, Molly, it’s not your fault,” John said, forcing down the disappointment crawling into his throat. He’d thought he might be able to see something more this time if he had another go at it.

“I really am sorry, John.”

“It’s fine, really.”

“Maybe you’ll be able to figure something out about the cigar ashes,” Molly said, clearly trying to be helpful. “Did he usually smoke those types of cigars?”

“I don’t know, I’ll have to ask Lestrade about his habits,” John said. Lestrade hadn’t mentioned anything about smoking, it probably wasn’t an important enough detail to be worth mentioning. Lots of people enjoyed a smoke in the evening in the privacy of their own studies.

“Well hopefully that will put you on the right track,” Molly said. “I’ve got to go, another body just came in. It seems like there are more of them than usual. All pretty standard though, as far as I can tell.”

“Right, I’ll talk to you later then, I suppose,” John said.

“Yes, of course. We should have lunch sometime to catch up.”

“Yeah, we should.”

“Bye, John.”

John hung up and looked at his surroundings. His legs had been moving automatically while he talked, steering him straight to St. Bart’s as he’d originally intended. Except there was no reason to go in now. He really should have known that Adair wouldn’t still be there, especially after all the fits Sherlock used to throw whenever he couldn’t re-examen a body because it’d been sent off to be cremated or prepared for the wake. And to think he had actually been looking forward to spending time with a dead person. Maybe he was turning into Sherlock.

_Well then, perhaps your deductive skills will improve._

_If you keep talking to me, I’m going to eventually have to commit myself. I took an oath, it’s my responsibility as a doctor to help people of unsound mind and body._

_Don’t be so needlessly dramatic. Go talk to Lestrade, he might have made some progress on those background checks, though I doubt he’s turned up anything useful._

That was true, perhaps Lestrade had found something that could point him in the right direction. Then again, it’s not like he could just barge into Scotland Yard and demand information.

_Why not?_

_Because I would like to maintain my reputation as a relatively decent bloke and not an over-confident madman._

_Says the man talking to the dead in his head._

John groaned and rubbed his temples. This was getting out of hand, probably brought on by not getting any sleep the night before. That’s what he needed, more sleep. He could phone Lestrade in the morning.

John turned to figure out which street would take him most directly to his apartment. As he glanced over at St. Bart’s, his eyes slid involuntarily to the rooftop, and he realized where exactly he was standing.

_Stop there._

No.

_Okay, look up I’m on the rooftop._

_No._

John didn’t think about which street to take, he just walked as quickly as he could down the first one that would take him away from the very spot he’d watched Sherlock fall. Forget sleep. He needed a drink.

 

He’d only been in this particular pub once before. It was here that he’d learned that running off in the middle of a date to help your flatmate chase down a formerly-believed-to-be-deceased con artist won’t get a woman to call you back. Shame, she’d seemed nice.

An hour and a half and two beers later, John felt more relaxed, albeit a bit sleepier than before. He didn’t go out for spontaneous drinks like this very often, but he’d needed something to help take his mind off--

“--Sherlock Holmes.”

What?

John turned his head so fast he thought he might snap his neck. Who had said--or was he just imagining it, with the subject on his mind?

“--some amateur detective bloke--”

No, there it was again, no mistake this time. Someone was talking about Sherlock. John’s sight fell on a group of university students sitting at a table by the window. It seemed like they were there on a triple date or something, everyone was paired off. The girls were all dark-haired, with low-cut shirts and heavy make-up. The young men were fairly well-built, might even be rugby players. And the one in the middle, with the blonde hair gelled up into spikes and the blue jacket, he was the one talking about Sherlock. John focused in on their conversation, curious as to what would bring Sherlock’s name up. The papers had stopped mentioning him a long time ago.

“--used to go around solving mysteries, fancied himself a Dupin-type,” Spikes was saying. “All these disappearances remind me of when he was in the papers all the time, always solving those big cases, showing off like he was the greatest gift God ever gave to mankind. ‘Course, he turned out to be scamming the lot of us with fancy tricks and lots of bribes, didn’t he? I ask you, what kind of scum kidnaps kids and blackmails people just so he can get some bloody atten--?”

John was not aware that he had risen from his seat at the bar, nor did he realize he had attacked the young man until he’d gotten in a good two or three solid punches.

“The hell--?”

The bloke’s two mates, a tall teen with a goatee and the other who was wearing a _Punk’d_ jacket, pulled John away while the girls tittered together with wide eyes. John saw with great satisfaction that the Spikes’s nose was bleeding.

“The hell are you on, old man? You want to pick a fight?” He spluttered, holding his hand to his bloody nose. “I don’t even know you and you just come out of nowhere trying to start something--”

“Hang on,” the kid with the _Punk’d jacket_ , said, peering around to get a better look at John’s face. “I know who you are, you’re that guy with the blog. What’s his name?” he asked his friends over John’s head.

“John Watson, pleased to meet you now get the hell off me,” John said, eyes darting around. There was no way he could take on all three of them, these boys were built like tanks.

“So you can have another go at him? Sorry, mate,” the guy with the goatee on John’s left said. But Spikes was now right in John’s face, grinning as he wiped the blood out from underneath his nose.

“You’re the one who was always writing those stories online, following him around all the time, that Sherlock bloke.”

“Don’t you dare say his name.”

Spikes smiled even wider.

“Threatening me? Over an old dead fraud? Or did you not get the memo? He made everything up, all of it.”

“Shut up.” John’s voice was low, dangerously low.

“You’re still defending him? Were you in on it too or was it just that good of a shag?”

“Enough, Tom,” the _Punk’d_ man said while John twisted violently in his grip. “Let’s not start something here,” he added, jerking his head at the rest of the room.

The entire pub had gone silent, everyone was watching the four of them to see what would happen. John fervently hoped that no one else recognized him. That was all he needed, to be back in the papers again. The bloody cherry on top.

“Alright, let’s just take it easy,” the goatee man said. Spikes’s friends seemed to be a lot more level-headed than he. Or than John at the moment, for that matter. God help him he was actually shaking with rage, grinding his teeth together so hard that it hurt. A small part of him knew it wouldn’t be a good idea to get into a fistfight with these men, which would likely land him in either the hospital or prison, but that part was being rapidly smothered by a much stronger instinct that told him to just keep punching until there were a few holes in that hateful grin.

“Ignore Tom,” _Punk’d_ said, leaning down. “He likes to talk big, you won’t get anywhere with him. Why don’t we call you a cab?”

John closed his eyes and breathed out through his nose, forcing himself to calm down. “No, I can get one myself. Let go of me.”

“We’re not going to have any problems?”

John glared at Spikes.

“He’s not worth it.”

The other two released him. John gave Spikes one last scathing look before turning to walk out of the bar, everyone’s eyes on him. But Spikes couldn’t resist one last parting shot.

“Your master would be pleased to know his favorite pet is still so loyal.”

John’s fist made a satisfying crack as it broke Spikes’s nose.

 

The brisk evening air did nothing to cool John’s temper. He fumed as he walked down the street, hurling wordless insults at Tom and everyone like him who thought Sherlock had been anything less than extraordinary.

Luckily he’d had the sense to leave before Tom recovered and his friends decided to use him for rugby practice, but a part of him still wanted to go back and finish things.

Judging by the sound of footsteps close behind him, he wasn’t the only one still eager for a fight.

John continued walking, giving no sign he was aware of anyone behind him. It sounded like only one, no, maybe two people. So one of Tom’s friends had tagged along then. He might be able to take out one right away and then make a run for it. Then again, he could really use a good fight right about now. To his left, John saw the opening of an alleyway. His pursuers would most likely attack as he passed by it, so he would have to move before that.

Just as he reached the outer corner of the alleyway, John turned around to face--no one. The sidewalk was completely deserted, even though he could have sworn someone had been following him.

 _Great, now I’m hearing things on top of everything else._ John turned back and continued on his way. He might have been worried about what all this stress was going to do to his nerves. Might have been, if in those few moments when he thought he was being followed he hadn’t felt more excited than he had been in months.


	8. Villain

After waking from a thankfully dreamless sleep, John took a look at the morning’s newspaper while waiting for the kettle to boil. He’d been scanning the papers a lot more often recently, hoping to come across something related to the Adair case in the process. After glancing briefly at the headline (“Another mysterious disappearance leaves Scotland Yard baffled”) he thumbed through the rest of the pages. There wasn’t anything that seemed to be related to the case, however, so he flipped back to the front page to read the story in full.

This latest incident shared several similarities with previous disappearances, according to the article. The crime was seemingly motive-less, with the victim vanishing from his residence in the middle of the night and no witnesses. However, as Lestrade’s replacement, Detective Inspector Tobias Gregson, had pointed out several times at press conferences, there seemed to be no link between the victims themselves, making the kidnappings appear completely random. John thought back to the last “random” string of crimes he’d witnessed and wondered if there was perhaps more to this story than appeared.

The reporter seemed to agree, expressing doubt at Scotland Yard’s inability to find any connection whatsoever. With a startled jolt, John caught sight of a familiar name towards the end of the article.

“The detectives at Scotland Yard struggling to keep up with these continued abductions, along with an overall increased rate of criminal activity in central London, is highly reminiscent of the Sherlock Holmes era, making this reporter wonder if the influence of the faux detective has truly left us for good.”

John tossed the paper aside in disgust. Of course the press would find a way to bring Sherlock into this, even though he clearly had nothing to do with it. The Sherlock Holmes era indeed. He’d never put much stock into conspiracy theories. More likely than not, Scotland Yard simply couldn’t find any connection. The press just wanted to stir up newspaper sales using Sherlock’s name.

If there was one thing the media knew how to do, it was how to sensationalize things. John still remembered very clearly the extensive cover stories the papers did of the incident and the following investigation at the Yard. Every day there was a new headline spotlighting the “Sherlock Scandal.” And, of course, every reporter’s dream interviewee was one John H. Watson, Holmes chronicler, flatmate, and the closest person to the criminal mastermind himself. John flatly refused to speak with any of them, and only offered one statement to the dozens of reporters who called, emailed, and, in one case, ambushed him at the Tesco.

“Sherlock Holmes was and is the most brilliant man I have ever known. Anyone who thinks he was anything less than a genius and a true man is an idiot.”

In the first few weeks after the funeral he’d become a bit of a recluse. He’d found a small apartment and essentially locked himself away, avoiding the press and concerned friends alike, until one day he couldn’t stand the inactivity any longer and applied for a job at the practice. By that time, the hype of the incident had faded away, and he was no longer plagued by reporters whenever he was spotted on the streets. He got the occasional comment or remark, but those had happened less and less as time went on and people forgot. Though how anyone could forget someone as memorable as Sherlock was a great mystery to John, considering how hard he had tried to. Well, not to forget the man himself, but how wonderful his life had been when John had lived at 221B. He should have known it would be a fruitless endeavor. He hadn’t been able to forget the war either. Not that he tried anymore.

The shrill whistle of the tea kettle combined with the sudden ringing of John’s phone broke him out of his reverie. He swore, dashed over to the stove to take the kettle off and then nearly tripped over his work shoes that were scattered on the floor in his rush to get to his mobile.

“Hello?” he panted.

“John? It’s me.”

“Greg? Is everything alright?”

“Yeah, I just had a bit of time off from work so I thought I’d call you with those background checks of Adair’s mates.”

Oh, right. The case. John was so used to Lestrade calling to complain about something Sherlock had done or to tip him off about a serial killer. There’s nothing quite like being woken up at three in the morning to the Detective Inspector of Scotland Yard informing you that your deranged roommate snuck out about an hour ago and was now chasing an escaped convict down the Thames in a stolen motor boat.

“Sorry it took so long, we’ve been swamped over here all week. You hear about that other disappearance?”

“Yeah, I just saw it in the paper. There was a statement from the new Detective Inspector, he says there doesn’t seem to be a connection.”

“That’s just Gregson’s way of keeping the press off our backs,” Lestrade said, his cold tone making it perfectly clear what he thought of his successor. “We know there must be some kind of connection, but we’d rather the press didn’t tip off whoever’s behind it before we’ve had a chance to figure it out. Anyway, about those names on the paper. They all check out, legally-speaking, and no outstanding debts or fines that would suggest this was a financially-motivated killing.”

“That brings us back to square one again then.”

“Maybe not.”

“Oh?”

“One of the three has a history in the military. Sebastian Moran. Well, Colonel Sebastian Moran, as he used to be called, before his dishonorable discharge from the army. No registered weapons under his name, but that doesn’t mean anything, there are plenty of other ways to get guns around here outside of the law.”

John thought guiltily of his own gun stashed away under his mattress.

“So he sounds like our man then,” he said. “Or at least the most likely suspect. Do you have his address?”

“You want to confront him alone? Are you sure that’s a good idea, John? This man could be a murderer remember.”

“He’ll have no reason to suspect I’m there investigating Adair’s death. Attacking me would only be stupid, especially when the police have ruled this out as a suicide.”

_People can be incredibly stupid most of the time, John._

Then he would be sure to bring along his own personal insurance against stupidity. Criminals tended to hesitate in attacking when they had a gun pointed at their chests. It’d been awhile since he’d used it, but he hadn’t ridden a bicycle in years either, and he was still sure he would remember how.

“Alright, just be careful,” Lestrade said, giving him the address. “We have enough dead and missing bodies on our hands as it is.”

“Will do. One other thing, Greg,” he said, thinking back to his conversation with Molly. “Did any of Adair’s family members or friends mention a smoking habit?”

“The mother said he used to be a heavy smoker, but he quit a few years back for health reasons.”

“And when you first entered the study, did you smell any cigar smoke?”

“Not that I remember. But the window was open, I suppose the smell would have faded by the time we got there.”

“I suppose so,” John said. So Adair wasn’t a regular smoker, but according to Molly he had been indulging in an evening cigar just before his death, and an expensive one at that. So what would have gotten Adair to start smoking again at the risk of his own health? Had he realized that it would hardly matter anymore?

“Unless you’ve got any other questions, I’ll let you go,” Lestrade said. “I haven’t had any free time in awhile, and I could really use some sleep.”

“Right, of course. Oh, by the way, you know how you said earlier that the police were sure there was a connection between all these disappearances?”

“Yes.”

“What makes you so sure? I thought the victims were all completely random.”

“The victims seem to be, yeah. But we’re pretty sure that whoever’s been abducting them is the same person, or the same organization.”

“Why?”

“Because--and don’t tell anyone I told you this--they always leave the same thing behind at every place the people went missing from.”

“What?”

“A slip of paper, with the letters, I.O.U. written on it. Nothing else.”

 

_A slip of paper, with the letters, I.O.U. written on it. Nothing else._

Lestrade’s words continued to echo in John’s head long after he had hung up the phone. What did that mean? Who owed whom what? Was this some kind of revenge scheme? But the victims had all been random, unrelated people, some found dead and others still missing, where was the motive in that? Was the message intended for someone else then? What kind of person would be on the receiving end of a message like that? Or the sender, for that matter?

_Sounds intriguing._

Yes, John was sure Sherlock would have liked this case. No connection other than a mysterious note left at the site of every crime scene. He would have leaping out the door in his excitement to begin the investigations, giddy as a schoolboy on Christmas Day.

_I am never giddy._

_You were sometimes. When I first met you and you found out that the taxi driver had killed a fourth person? That was the very definition of giddy._

_Don’t you have a case to be working on?_

Good point. Unlike Sherlock, John didn’t have room in his head for more than one mysterious set of circumstances at a time. Besides, this sounded a lot bigger than anything he could handle by himself. Actually, he wasn’t even sure he could handle the Adair case. But he sure as hell would try.

John grabbed his jacket from the back of a chair, his tea cooling and forgotten on the counter. Today was Saturday, and for once he was glad he didn’t have to be at the practice. No sense in wasting any time, he was ready to pay a visit to this ex-Colonel Moran fellow and hopefully finally make a breakthrough in this case.


	9. Evidence

The address Lestrade gave him sent John to a neighborhood in East Sussex. Moran’s house was . . . surprisingly small for a potential ex-military assassin. Though John wasn’t really sure what he had expected. A mansion? A moat? Maybe at least one of those larger houses overlooking the cliffs. It seemed more appropriate. Now that was romanticizing the facts. 

John supposed there was probably a better plan other than to just march straight up the driveway and knock on the door, but if there was, he couldn’t think of it. He’d gone through his cover story on the train ride over. Just a local reporter looking to get the public’s opinion on all the recent disappearances (two of which had been within an hour’s range of here). Sherlock most definitely would have come up with a better idea, but if Moran got suspicious John had his insurance tucked away in the waistband of his jeans, and the reporter gimmick had worked once before. He knew he was being a bit reckless, but it felt good after the past few months of normalcy.

The curtains were drawn in the front windows, but John knocked on the front door anyway. After waiting a few minutes and knocking again, John was forced to conclude that Moran wasn’t home. He turned to leave, very disappointed but thinking that he might go into town to see if the man was known amongst the locals, when the sight of the car parked in the driveway halted him. Either Moran had gone out for a walk and was likely to return in a short while, or something else was going on here.

John crept around to the side of the house towards the back. There, he saw a window unobscured by curtains and peered in. The place, as far as he could tell by his view of the main room and part of the kitchen, was completely empty. Moving around to the rear side of the house, John looked in through the small window of the back door. This afforded him a better view of the kitchen, which was also empty. Moran lived in fairly spartan accommodations. The living room had been bare of all furniture save for a threadbare sofa and an old television set, and the kitchen wasn’t much more crowded, sporting a small refrigerator, a few dishes stacked in the sink, and a kitchen table covered in a plain, white table cloth.

John strained to looked at the doorway where Moran’s bedroom must be. The house was only one story, and there were no other rooms that he could see from this vantage point. If his car was parked in the driveway, surely Moran must be home. So why hadn’t he answered the door? Had he suspected that someone would come after him, questioning him about Ronald Adair? Was he hiding away in another room with a gun, waiting?

_Too many questions, John. You know there’s only one way of finding the answers you need._

Right. Maybe Moran kept a spare key under the mat or--oh.

Or maybe Moran wasn’t the type to keep his back door locked. Interesting.

John hesitated on the threshold, his left hand on the door handle and his right creeping behind him to hover over his gun. Going into an unsecured house with a potential and most likely armed murderer hiding in an unseen location was the very definition of reckless and stupid. It was exactly the sort of thing Sherlock would have done.

John opened the door and walked straight into the kitchen. First things first, before he could look around more thoroughly he had to be sure that the rest of the house was empty. Luckily there weren’t that many rooms left to search, just a bedroom and the tiny bathroom that accompanied it. Moran’s bedroom was a bit more decorated than the rest of the house. A few framed photographs stood on top of the wooden dresser, and his bedside table was covered with an alarm clock, something that looked like a credit card . . . and a mobile phone.

The suspicious nagging at the back of John’s mind tugged even harder. People hardly ever went out without their mobiles these days, so either Moran was still around somewhere nearby or this case was about to get a lot more complicated.

The bathroom proved empty as well, so John finally allowed himself to relax, though only a little bit. Glad that he had had the foresight to bring gloves, he started rifling through the drawers in Moran’s dresser, which revealed nothing except neatly folded clothes. The credit card turned out to be a membership card for the Victory Services Club, forming another solid connection between Moran and Adair. After replacing the card on the bedside table, John took a moment to take stock of what he had seen.

Moran was clearly not home, but his car was still in the driveway, his mobile had been left in his bedroom, and the back door had been unlocked. As a fellow former member of the military, John thought it unlikely that Moran would simply go out for a stroll without securing his house, especially if he might be involved in the Adair murder. That, to John, only left one explanation. Moran had known that someone would come after him, and had decided to flee. Mobiles could be tracked, as could registered license plate numbers, and there would be no need to lock the doors if he didn’t intend to return.

Dammit, another lead straight into a dead end. John rubbed at his temples in frustration. Was it too much to ask for one thing to work out in this case?

_Come on, John, it would be boring if the answers just fell into your lap of their own accord._

_Well then I could use a little boring right now,_ John thought. Moran had been his last hope. Now he had nothing to follow up on.

_So just because he isn’t home means he’s disappeared from the face of the Earth?_

Alright, so maybe he could inform Lestrade that Moran had taken off, maybe ask around town, see if he could find out where Moran had gone. Not entirely hopeless then, just a bit of legwork. In the meantime, maybe there was something else he could find in the house.

From amongst the pictures on the dresser a polished frame caught his eye that hosted a standard photo of a man in a military uniform who must be the ex-Colonel Sebastian Moran himself. John had to admit, Moran cut an impressive figure with a heavy brow and a square chin that aged his face. Even with his recent military haircut, John could still see red stubble around his lips and chin. His eyes were so dark they appeared black in the photograph, staring straight into the camera with an almost bored expression. He was young, maybe eighteen or nineteen and probably straight out of school.

There were only two other photographs on the dresser, and they were not nearly in as good condition as the first. So Moran was proud of his time in the military then, despite the dishonorable discharge. What did that mean? Sherlock would have known. Sherlock would have been able to deduce Moran’s entire personality and lifestyle just by looking at his house for five minutes. But John didn’t need to know the man’s preferred sleeping habits to track him now. He would just have to compensate in other ways.

The second photograph had clearly gone through some abuse, as if it had been carried around in someone’s pocket for awhile before being placed in its frame. It featured a group of men in uniform posing in front of a military jeep. This must be Moran’s unit then. It was difficult to determine their location from the non-descript background, though it certainly didn’t look like Afghanistan. Perhaps a training camp? John spotted Moran in the left corner, smiling as if the camera had caught him mid-laugh. His right arm was draped over the shoulder of a fellow soldier who was smiling just as broadly as his companion. John recognized that look too, it was replicated on the faces of the other young men who had not yet seen battle. This had been taken before Moran’s promotion to Colonel, probably shortly after he had enlisted.

The third photograph was another one of Moran, only this time the man was older and decorated in the medals and insignias that identified his military rank. But John felt himself drawn to Moran’s eyes.

 _Those are killer’s eyes,_ John thought, looking at the harsh pupils, no longer bored but staring at the camera with a fierce intensity. _I know those eyes, I’ve seen them on my own face sometimes. Those could easily be the eyes of a murderer._

The glass of the photograph had been completely shattered, and the frame was slightly bent, as if someone had thrown it against the wall.

 _Well, we can check off bitterness at his dismissal and anger management issues,_ John thought. Perhaps it had been a spiteful grudge that had led Moran to take Adair’s life.

_Careful, John. You haven’t proven him the killer yet._

Maybe not, but it seemed obvious from John’s point of view. This wasn’t the home of a ex-soldier who had successfully re-integrated into normal society. It was isolated, barren, and seemed much more suited for someone harboring resentment towards the military for discharging him. After some time, Moran met Adair, most likely at the Victory Services Club since they were both members. Perhaps Moran resented Adair for his success while he wallowed in dishonorable mediocrity. Then Moran had built up a gambling debt so great he would have been unable to paid it off unless he took out the man he owed the money to.

_It’s mere speculation, John._

_It’s logical speculation. What other answer could there be?_

_I can think of at least fourteen._

_Moran is gone, and wherever he went he clearly didn’t want to be followed. He has the skills and the means to have committed the crime. It must be him._

_You still need proof._

True. Moran may have gone into hiding, but that wasn’t enough to convince a jury of his guilt. There must be something else he could find.

John picked up the mobile on Moran’s bedside table and started scrolling through his text messages. The only recent ones were from someone named “Chuck.”

_Haven’t heard anything from you in a few days, everything alright?_

_Look, I told you, money won’t be an issue after next Friday. Leave Ronnie alone._

_I won’t tell you again, leave it be, Seb. I don’t have time for your petty grudges._

The last message had been sent the day before Adair’s death. Concerned messages from a friend warning Moran to leave Ronald “Ronnie” Adair alone, what more proof did he need? Moran was guilty, John was sure of it. Just in case the investigations in town didn’t work out, John copied Chuck’s number into his own mobile. Maybe Moran’s friend could provide some further insight into the situation. That done, John replaced Moran’s phone and dialed a new number.

“Greg? It’s John, I think we’ve found our man.”


	10. Interference

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay! Between finals and moving back to the US, I haven't had much time for writing. Hopefully this extra-long chapter will make up for it.

John collapsed onto his bed, exhausted and completely dissatisfied with how the day had turned out, especially after such a promising start.

After phoning Lestrade he had gone into town to see if he could find anyone who might have known where Moran went, or who could give him any insight into the man’s character. As his luck would have it, Moran was a complete recluse, rarely venturing into town unless it was to the supermarket for groceries and making it a point not to socialize with the locals. No one knew much about him other than the fact that he had lived alone on the outskirts of town for at least seven years. The populace saw him so infrequently that they never knew whether he was away for long periods of time or not, and didn’t know if he had family or friends in London.

John had been discouraged but still hopeful until Lestrade had called him just as his train was pulling into Paddington Station. The former Inspector had been to Moran’s house (his lowered status in the Yard meant that he didn’t have the authority to send a team out to investigate a suspect’s house on circumstantial evidence for a case that was technically closed) but he had found no sign of the mobile.

“What?” John asked, shouting over the noise of the station crowd. “I left it on the bedside table where I found it, right next to the Victory Services membership card.”

“Well it’s not there now, and neither is this card you’re talking about,” came Lestrade’s reply, barely discernible over the sounds of luggage carts and train whistles.

“What are you talking about, where else could it be?”

“I don’t know, John, I searched the place but I couldn’t find it.”

Oh. Oh no.

“You’re certain, you’re absolutely certain it’s not there?” John asked, knowing the answer but needing to be sure anyway.

“I’m sorry, John. It’s not here.”

Sherlock may have thought the police incompetent at best, but even they couldn’t misplace a crucial bit of evidence like this, and besides, Lestrade wasn’t like his fellow officers. Sherlock had even gone so far as to call him “mildly less moronic” than the rest of Scotland Yard once. If Lestrade couldn’t find the mobile, then it wasn’t there, which meant that someone had gone to Moran’s house and taken it while John had been in town. As to who that could be, well, Moran was the only possible option. Clearly he’d realized his mistake and returned to recover his phone, probably so that he could ditch it properly in a gutter somewhere or off the edge of a cliff. To think that he had been at the house while John was just a few miles away trying to sniff him out. Frustration itched away at John as his knuckles whitened around his phone.

“Right,” he said to Lestrade. “Sorry you had to make that trip all the way out there for nothing.”

“Did you manage to learn anything useful in the town? Something from one of his neighbors, maybe?”

“No,” John said, the word tasting bitter and all too familiar in his mouth. “He kept to himself, no one I asked could say much about him.”

There was silence on the other end for several seconds, and John felt a throb of guilt for each moment that passed.

“Look, John, I really appreciate you looking into this for me,” Lestrade said, but John could tell from the tone of his voice exactly how this conversation was going to end. “I know you’ve put a lot of time and effort into this investigation. I don’t think even Sherlock could have done better.”

An obvious lie, but John let it slide. He was so very, very tired.

“But it seems like we’ve run out of leads to follow. They’re putting the pressure on me over at the Yard and I’m sure you’ve got plenty of work to do at your practice. Maybe . . . maybe we should just let this sit for awhile, and if any new developments arise . . .”

John didn’t hear the rest of Lestrade’s words. He felt consumed, suffocated by an all-encompassing sense of disappointment in himself. He’d thought he could handle this, thought that this case was just what he needed to get some semblance of his old life back. That maybe this, after all, was what he had been meant to do. Instead the entire process had been one dead end after another, and he had completely failed to turn up anything to help Lestrade arrest Adair’s killer.

_That’s not entirely true, John. You know who and why, you just need the proof._

_And who are you to keep encouraging me on a fool’s errand? John thought sadly. You’re not the real Sherlock Holmes. You’re just a voice I imagined because I wanted to solve a case with him again._

That was what it had all been about, really, at the crux of things. John had wanted, _needed_ to feel like he was a part of something greater, to feel like he was more than just another wounded soldier. Sherlock was the only person who had ever made him feel like that, and this entire, pathetic attempt to solve the case had just been a pointless attempt to get him back, even just as an echo in his head. But Sherlock was never coming back, and John should have just accepted that instead of allowing himself to run on false hope for so long.

“John?”

“You’re right, Greg. I think I’ve done all I can,” John said quietly. “If you’re ever looking for a mate to go drinking with, let me know, but I think you should leave the detective work to the professionals.”

“It’s not a habit I’m used to,” Lestrade said, as John hung up the phone.

 

The next few days passed slowly for John, and it was with relief that he remembered his promise to Mrs. Hudson. She seemed surprised that he had kept their lunch date, but she welcomed him in warmly and immediately set about preparing some tea and biscuits. They chatted mildly for awhile, and eventually John brought up Mrs. Hudson’s new tenant.

“Did he stop by? That chap who’s renting the flat upstairs?” he said, consciously avoiding the words “our flat.”

“Yes, he came by just yesterday, in fact. Nice man, though a bit strange.”

“How so?” John said, his teacup paused halfway to his lips. Baker Street had a reputation of hosting “strange” tenants, even if Mrs. Hudson hadn’t always been aware of the fact that more of her residents had been professional killers than not.

“Well, he’s a tall fellow, black hair and beard, with very broad shoulders.” Mrs. Hudson stretched her hands out on either side of her own shoulders to demonstrate, indicating someone proportional to a small giant. John pictured the mysterious man towering over the elderly woman and felt a surge of protectiveness towards her. “And he’s definitely Russian, like I thought when I heard him on the phone. He’s a very polite man, but I don’t know, maybe it’s the beard but I don’t like it when I can’t see people’s faces very well. Hard to tell expressions that way. He wears sunglasses too, because he has weak eyes and can’t stand bright lights, he said.”

“Are you sure about this guy?” John asked. “There are plenty of . . . questionable characters in London. This man could be on the run from the law or part of an underground drug circle.”

“Oh heavens, I can’t imagine anyone like that living in my rooms,” Mrs. Hudson said. John thought back to his and Sherlock’s previous neighbors and took a large swig of tea. “Mind you, I get all sorts in here at one point or another, but what sort of man rents out an apartment and doesn’t even use it?”

“He still hasn’t moved in?”

“He hasn’t even been inside. He only came by yesterday to tell me that someone might come round every now and then to straighten things up or to drop off something for him, and that I should just let them into the flat. It’s very strange, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” John said, making a mental note to check in on Mrs. Hudson on a regular basis. Whatever was going on with the new tenant could be far more sinister than she might know.

They talked for another hour, Mrs. Hudson dropping none too subtle hints that John ought to find “someone nice” to spend time with outside of work, which John reciprocated by saying that he knew a very nice, single man about her age who ran a restaurant on Northumberland Street. Finally, just after five, John got up to leave, promising to give her a call sometime later in the week, just to check in. Mrs. Hudson smiled and enfolded him in a hug that spoke volumes, and again he felt terrible about leaving her alone but promised himself that he would continue to make up for it.

John stepped out onto 221 Baker Street’s doorstep, fully intending to walk around the city for a bit before returning to his apartment. It had been awhile since he’d stretched his legs, and even though the evening was growing chilly he--

John’s cheerful mood instantly evaporated as his eyes fixed on the black car parked at the curb right outside the front door.

_Mycroft._

John contemplated a number of options, several of which involved bolting down the sidewalk in a fruitless attempt to outrun a car. But he knew it would only be a temporary reprieve at best--if he managed to make it back to his apartment he had no doubt the elder Holmes would be there waiting for him. Besides, he wasn’t one to back down from a challenge, unwanted as it was, so he set his jaw, clenched and unclenched his fists a few times, and got into the car.

“John,” Mycroft greeted him cordially, and John was surprised to see him sitting in the car rather than waiting to meet him at some secluded parking garage.

“Mycroft,” he bit back, keeping his syllables short and clipped.

Mycroft paused for a moment, and John knew those beady eyes were taking in every detail. He had always disliked it when Mycroft “read” him. With Sherlock there had always been some things the consulting detective couldn’t deduce, but to Mycroft’s eyes, nothing was hidden.

Unlike Lestrade, Mycroft Holmes looked exactly as John had last seen him. He was perfectly immaculate in his manner of dress, and his eyes peered out from either side of his beak-like nose. Seeing the man again stirred up old emotions in John. He remembered the last time he’d spoken with him face-to-face, when he’d confronted him about betraying Sherlock to Moriarty. Well, if Mycroft had come here to ask for his forgiveness again, he would leave sorely disappointed.

Mycroft seemed to pick up on John’s animosity, for he now stared directly into John’s eyes and attempted a sort of half-smile. It was like a shark’s grin.

“It’s been quite some time--”

“What do you want?”

Mycroft raised his eyebrows, fingers flexing over the handle of the umbrella that never left his side.

“I see you are keen to get to the point, as always.”

“I’d just as soon skip the small talk,” John said harshly. “I don’t want to hear it, and you have no need for it, so tell me what you want so I can go home.”

“Ah, yes. And where does Dr. Watson call home now?”

“Why tell you? I’m sure you’ve got the exact coordinates of my refrigerator.”

“Yes, you’ve rather settled for smaller accommodations, haven’t you?” Mycroft said. Unlike the first time they met, he didn’t pretend to read the information out of a notebook. “Though I suppose it is a more convenient location for your current employment at the practice. You live quite the ordinary life now, John, the one you perhaps sought out when you first returned to London.”

“Have you come here just to tell me things I already know? Because if so, I’d like to get back to that ordinary life now, thank you.”

“Are you content?”

“What?”

“This new life of yours, living in a tiny apartment and burying yourself in your medical work--is it truly what you want?”

John frowned.

“Of course it is.”

“Oh? Then perhaps you could explain to me why you feel the need to play the detective in your free time.”

So that was it. Mycroft had made contact with him after all this time to figure out why he was prying into the Adair case.

“I really don’t think it’s any of your business what I choose to do in my spare time,” John said.

“This murder you’ve been investigating,” Mycroft continued, as though John hadn’t spoken at all. “How did such a case attract your attention?”

“How did it catch yours?” John retorted. Mycroft usually couldn’t be bothered to concern himself with anything outside the government, unless Sherlock was involved. Why should he care what John got up to these days?

“Mr. Adair, as I am sure you have discovered by this point, is the late son of a very prominent government official in Australia, so naturally I must concern myself with the details surrounding this incident. I cannot imagine that the same applies to you, however, so again I am forced to ask--why have you become involved?”

“I ran into Gre--Lestrade on the street a few weeks back and he told me about it. Thought I might be able to help considering . . . but I’m obviously not the man your brother was, and I haven’t been able to turn up anything useful.”

“Is that so?”

Why was Mycroft pretending he didn’t know what John had been up to recently, when clearly this entire conversation was proof that he did? Mycroft was, if nothing else, an extremely well-informed man. He should have known every single step John had taken if he had made it his business to study the Adair case. And he clearly didn’t want him involved with it, if John was gauging the purpose of this meeting correctly. What was he up to?

“Why do you care if I’m involved or not?” John asked. “A little investigating can’t hurt anything.”

“Alas, you underestimate your influence,” Mycroft said. “And so we come to the crux of why I desired to speak with you about this. This situation is far more delicate than you realize, and so I would request that you stop your no doubt well-intended meddling and leave it in my hands.”

“So this was political? Did some rival government agency hire Sebastian Moran to take Adair out?” John said, hoping to catch Mycroft off-guard by casually dropping Moran’s name. Mycroft, however, seemed unperturbed.

“I thought I could deal with this matter subtly but it seems that a more direct approach is required if I am to get through to you.”

“More--hang on.” Something clicked in John’s mind as a new set of possibilities presented themselves to him. “That was _you_?”

“I tried to be discreet.”

“You took Moran’s mobile after I’d left his house?”

“ . . . His mobile?”

“Yeah, I left it on the bedroom dresser along with the membership card that linked him to Adair, but when Lestrade showed up to search the house he couldn’t find them anywhere. You appropriated evidence just so that I would have no choice but to give up?”

But something wasn’t right. The look Mycroft was fixing him with right now was . . . puzzled, if John was reading him correctly. But then again, he never had been able to read Mycroft as well as he could his brother. In the next second, Mycroft’s expression settled back into its usual calm, blank demeanor.

“I assure you, John, I am only acting out of your best interests.”

“Do me a favor, and don’t.”

“You think I intend you harm? I assure you, nothing could be further from the truth.”

“Do you know how your brother described you when I told him about our first meeting?”

“Very strongly, I would imagine.”

“He said that you were the most dangerous man I would ever meet. But I don’t think even he realized how dangerous you could really be.”

“Well, I’m glad that something my brother said has stuck with you.”

“Among other things. And do you know what else he said?”

“I am sure you will enlighten me.”

“That you weren’t his problem. And you’re not mine either. We’re done here.”

“Yes, I suppose we are.”

When John got out of the car he wasn’t in the least bit surprised to find himself standing outside of his front door. He intended to march straight into his building without so much as a backwards glance when a sudden thought made him turn back.

“If you want to do something useful,” he said, leaning down through the open car door, “you should run a background check on the new tenant Mrs. Hudson’s got in our old rooms.”

Mycroft’s eyebrows shot straight to his forehead.

“The new tenant? Whatever for?”

“He sounds like a suspicious character, and as you well know Baker Street seems to have a talent for attracting dangerous people. I don’t want Mrs. Hudson to be in any sort of danger.”

It had grown dark while John had been inside the car, and a shadow must have flickered across Mycroft’s face for a second, because John could have sworn that the elder Holmes had just cracked a smile.

“I shall look into it, although I am quite certain that Mrs. Hudson is perfectly safe.”

“Right. Let’s not do this again sometime.”

“Goodbye, John. Remember my words.”

Without replying, John slammed the car door behind him and retreated into his apartment.


	11. Necropolis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yikes, can't believe I left this so long. I thought summer was suppose to give you more time to do things.

John was surprised by how many people came to Sherlock’s funeral. There were some, like Molly, Greg, and Mrs. Hudson, who he had expected to come, but in the wake of the media scandal currently in the process of destroying Sherlock’s name and reputation thanks to one Kitty Reily, John had very much doubted many people would want to pay their respects to the fallen detective.

He had been wrong.

Henry Knight, from the Baskerville case, showed up arm in arm with his former therapist. Raz, Sherlock’s graffiti expert, stood slouched over in the back row, surrounded by several other people John took to be members of Sherlock’s homeless network. Adam West’s ex-fiance, Lucy, sat next to Phil, who had lost a significant amount of weight since Sherlock had pointed out his untreated heart condition. And there were others, some of whom John recognized but others he assumed were from other cases from before he had met Sherlock. Dozens, maybe hundreds of murders, abductions, thefts, and betrayals, all brought to light by one miraculous man. It lifted John’s heart, just a bit, to see how much influence Sherlock had had in the world, and that the world had not forgotten his true face.

Of course, not everyone at the funeral was welcome, in John’s opinion. Donovan and Anderson, probably at Lestrade’s insistence, attended the service, though they didn’t stick around long afterwards, which was good, as John thought he might hit one or possibly both of them if they stayed any longer. John also spotted Sebastian Wilkes, who sat through the whole thing with a look on his face as though he wasn’t sure why he had bothered to come.

And then there was Mycroft, who John was surprised showed up at all. He’d thought such a public display of sentiment would be beneath the elder Holmes brother, yet there he was, although John wasn’t sure whether he even stayed for the entire service, as he seemed to vanish halfway in. It was all for the best, really, John thought, as he had no desire whatsoever to even look at Mycroft Holmes, much less talk to him. After all, if Mycroft hadn’t blabbed to Moriarty, Sherlock would still be alive.

The service itself was short and simple. A few people, like Lestrade, offered up a few words about Sherlock, what knowing him had been like, what losing him meant. Everyone stared when John went up to say his bit, but he hardly knew what he was saying, only that it would never be enough. He might have said something about how incredible it was to see Sherlock trying to work a case out, rattling off deductions as if he could see the answers in front of him, like text on a screen. About how much good he did for the rest of the world; how many lives he had touched.

What he didn’t talk about were the late nights filled with violin music and mutterings. The bouts of silence, the heads in the fridge, fingers in the jam. The frustration. The exasperation. The sheer, overwhelming madness of it all.

Those were the parts he had loved the most.

He watched stolidly as they lowered the coffin into the ground. Back straight and eyes forward like he’d been taught in the military. Stand at attention, and don’t look away until it’s over.

Afterwards he was approached by a few people, mostly to offer their condolences and to tell him what a wonderful man Sherlock had been. He thought it was a bit funny that they automatically placed him into the position of the grieving widow. Before he might have tried to correct them. Now he just didn’t care.

“John?”

Molly tapped him lightly on the shoulder. She was dressed in a simple black dress with her hair down, which reminded John of that disastrous Christmas party. Sherlock had made an arse out of himself as usual, but it was the first time John had ever heard the man apologize to someone. That ought to count for something.

“I didn’t expect this many people to show up,” Molly said, looking around at the dispersing crowd instead of meeting John’s eyes.

“Nor did I,” John said.

“Well, I suppose he did meet a lot of people. And you don’t ever really forget Sherlock once you meet him, right?”

“I don’t think it’s possible to forget someone like him, though I imagine most people would want to.”

“He won’t forget you either, especially after what you did.”

John blinked and looked over at her. Molly was staring straight ahead, her expression completely blank.

“What I did?”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know, John. You killed him.”

“ _What?_ ”

But Molly had vanished somehow into the crowd, and he couldn’t find her.

He hadn’t killed Sherlock. It wasn’t his fault, Sherlock had jumped, there was nothing he could have done.

“Wasn’t there?”

John whirled around. Lestrade was standing there with the same blank look on his face that Molly had had.

“I didn’t know. He tricked me, I couldn’t have stopped him.”

“You were the closest person to him, but it didn’t take much for you to leave him. A few sentences were all you needed to abandon him.”

“You lost faith in him. You bought his silly lies and hurt him. You called him a machine.”

In a blurred blink Lestrade was replaced by Mrs. Hudson, though John could have sworn she had already left for home. And suddenly Mycroft reappeared, his all-seeing eyes fixed upon John like he was a bug underfoot.

“You thought you could blame me for everything, but in truth I’m not the only person responsible for Sherlock’s death.”

And then they all converged on him, surrounding him with their voices, bearing down on him as he tried to shut them out, tried to run away but the cemetery had vanished and all he could hear were voices.

“You left him.”

“How could you let him die?”

“You should have done something.”

“Why didn’t you help him?”

“It’s your fault he’s dead.”

“It’s your fault.

“Your fault.”

“Your fault . . .”

 

John woke up sweating again. It took him a moment to remember where he was, that Sherlock had been dead for months and that he attendees of his funeral had not risen up against him in a collective wave of anger and blame. Not that it mattered. John didn’t need a therapist to tell him what the dream had meant. He felt guilty.

But was it a guilt brought on by the usual reason, or was it something else? Something that had been twitching in the back of John’s mind ever since he’d started that wretched case, like a relentless itch that wouldn’t go away until he scratched it.

John got up, made some tea, and checked the telly for something appropriately mind-numbing. But he couldn’t sit still, the feeling of restlessness that he had woken up with refusing to go away. Resigning himself, John switched off the telly and grabbed his coat.

He had to scratch that itch.

 

The cemetery hadn’t changed much since John had last been there--not that he expected it to have. The grass had more patches of brown in it than earlier in the season and the trees were a bit more sparse. He had not been here in some time, but he still knew exactly which row of graves to look for. Still, he wandered around for a bit, looking at the many tombstones in their varying stages of decay. The newer ones that people still brought flowers to with freshly planted grass peeking through the recently disturbed soil, and the older ones that had begun to crumble, whose names had already faded away into gray anonymity. Finally he could avoid it no more, and walked to the last row of stones.

Sherlock’s grave was pitifully bland. There was no epitaph, no random quote from some poet or religious text. John snorted at the thought of what Sherlock would think if his grave-marker had been engraved with a verse from the Bible. Instead there was just the name, “Sherlock Holmes,” gold letters against the black marble. Would they, too, fade into obscurity one day? Sharper than ever, the guilt flowed over him. While he’d been burying himself in distractions, Sherlock had been alone.

“Sorry,” John said,” for not bringing flowers, I mean. Not that you would have wanted them, probably. Too sentimental.”

He half-expected to hear Sherlock’s voice in his head, but as he had been in life, the man was maddeningly silent whenever he needed to talk to him.

“I should have come before. Though you wouldn’t have noticed, I guess, but I still should have come.”

After a moment’s hesitation, and looking around to be sure he was alone, John lowered himself to the ground, carefully maneuvering his aching right leg until he was sitting with his back propped up against the stone. It was the closest he could get.

“God, I can’t believe I’m doing this. Talking to a block of stone like it’s you.”

Still, in for a pound . . . 

“I’m sure the reason I haven’t been here is obvious,” John said, leaning against the grave, which felt cool on the back of his head. “Everyone says it gets better in time, but I still can’t come to grips with this. I think I could accept it more if you had been shot by some deranged criminal but this . . . I just don’t understand this.

“Why, Sherlock?” John said, speaking the name aloud for the first time since he’d said goodbye in this very spot a lifetime ago. “Why did you think you had to do it? Didn’t I tell you I was with you one hundred percent? We were going to stop Moriarty. You knew how weak his plan would have been in the long-run. Even now, people are questioning it, how you really could have made up all those cases. Whether you were innocent after all. And that’s all without you showing them the way. I just don’t understand it, Sherlock. I could see you taking him down with you, maybe in some dramatic struggle that sent you both over the edge. But why would you just let him win like that?”

The headstone remained silent, as did Sherlock’s voice, and John was left with the incredible frustration of not knowing and the one question that tore at him like crows pecking flesh: Why? Why? Why? Why?

There were too many thoughts in his head. Too many things he hadn’t wanted to face. But now he knew that if he ever wanted a life again, he had to face them. He had to face them, not only for himself but because Sherlock deserved this last piece of justice.

John got up, brushed off the seat of his trousers, and gave the grave a farewell pat. Then he turned and walked away, his right leg no longer stiff and uncomfortable beneath him.

It was time for the world to read the final case of Sherlock Holmes.


	12. Solution

John sat staring at the blinking cursor on his laptop for nearly ten minutes, with no idea where to start or even if he could bring himself to remember the incident long enough to finally put it in writing. But he had decided this was the right course of action to take, so he forced himself to put his fingers to the keyboard. But where to begin? Should he start at the hospital? Sherlock’s arrest? Moriarty’s trial? John took a single, deep breath.

_Sherlock and I had been enjoying a string of successful cases, and what had begun as a spot of attention in the media had now blown into something near-famous . . ._

For the next three hours John wrote. He wrote and wrote, only stopping occasionally for a moment to think about some odd detail or fact. He wrote about the simultaneous break-ins at the bank, the prison, and the Tower of London, the court case, the kids who’d been abducted and Sherlock’s incredible efforts that quickly led to their rescue, the suspicion at the Yard, the arrest, Kitty Riley and her article, Richard Brook, all of it. It was much more detailed than his posts usually were, but he wanted to tell the world everything, wanted no doubt to be left in the obscurity of vagueness. Finally, and far too quickly it seemed to him, he had reached St. Bart’s.

_After Jim “Richard Brook” Moriarty had vanished out of Miss Riley’s apartment window, Sherlock went off on his own, muttering about something he needed to do alone. Later that night he texted me to come to the lab at St. Bart’s immediately, and when I got there he told me that the key to everything was to figure out the computer code Moriarty had created and use it to destroy Richard Brooks and bring Jim Moriarty back into the public light._

John paused for a moment to think over the next few details. He’d left out his entire conversation with Mycroft, but that was nothing unusual, as he did tend to gloss over Mycroft’s role in Sherlock’s cases. He’d always kept the focus of the post on Sherlock. He thought back to that night in the lab, when they’d sat together in silence, trying to figure out where Moriarty had hidden the code. Well, Sherlock had been trying to figure it out, John was fairly sure he’d fallen asleep a few hours in. Until . . .

_I woke up with a start to the sound of my phone going off. Bleary-eyed and half-awake, I listened as a paramedic informed me that Mrs. Hudson had been shot in the hallway of her apartment and didn’t have long left. Now fully awake, I jumped up and headed towards the door, telling Sherlock what had happened as I prayed I’d find a cab this early in the morning. But Sherlock said, in a tone that sounded almost bored, that he was too busy to go. I was appalled at the inhuman disinterest he was showing at the news of Mrs. Hudson’s accident, a woman who, arguably, was the closest figure he had to a mother and towards whom he had always demonstrated a certain degree of protectiveness. But there he was, sitting back in his chair and telling me in a complete monotone that she was only his landlady. I should have known then that something else was going on, but I was too shocked and, frankly, angry to take any notice, and I left him there._

John rested his chin against his hand, taking a moment to read over what he had just written. In plain black and white type he was even less proud of his actions than he had already been. It was the fear and grief of thinking that Mrs. Hudson was dying, he knew that, but to have walked out on Sherlock despite everything that was going on, he would never forgive himself for that.

“I got to Baker Street,” he said to himself, his fingers resuming their dance.

_I got to Baker Street in less than five minutes. Traffic was thankfully light and I paid the cabbie extra to ignore a few speed limits. But I was in for another shock as I ran into the entrance hall and found Mrs. Hudson, alive and well and most certainly not-shot, watching on as a repairman was doing some work on the wall. It took me about three seconds to work out what had happened._

It had been so clear in the taxi ride back. That Sherlock’s apparent disinterest in Mrs. Hudson’s life had merely been a way to get rid of John, to ensure that there would be no one around to stop him from carrying out that dreadful, final act. And yet, John couldn’t help but wonder, though he had clearly taken pains to get John away, he would have known that the lie could only hold up in the time it took John to get back to their apartment, and he must have foreseen that John would return. Yet, he didn’t call him until John was stepping out of the cab at St. Bart’s. Had he wanted John to see him in those final moments? Could he really have been that cruel?

John shook his head. He didn’t like the feelings that were being stirred up because of this. Best to get through the rest of it as quickly as possible, like ripping off a bandage. He went through the rest of it, the conversation between them as he stared up in horror while Sherlock tried to convince him that he was a fake. Then Sherlock hung up the phone.

_There will never be any words, nor will I attempt to find them, to describe what it felt like to watch my best friend fall through the air and hit the pavement below._

No, no that wasn’t right. John paused, brow furrowed. He knew something was wrong here, something was off. But it was about a moment so shocking, so traumatic that it had shattered him completely inside and out, so that John had locked it away so the thought of it wouldn’t break him again. But now he had to look, because . . .

_I never saw him hit the ground._

Why hadn’t he? He had followed Sherlock’s progress the entire time, of that he was certain, unable to blink or look away. But he had no memory of how the consulting detective had gotten to the ground. Then he remembered.

_No, stay exactly where you are. Don’t move._

There had been a building, hadn’t there? A low-level building between him and the hospital that had obstructed his view of the first story. He had seen Sherlock fall but he hadn’t seen him land.

But he must have landed, must have broken against the pavement because there had been blood, so much blood, and John had grabbed his wrist but felt no pulse.

Stay exactly where you are. That’s what Sherlock had said to him when he tried to run into the hospital. He had been ordered, several times, not to move from that one, specific spot. And Sherlock Holmes, for all his eccentricities, never did anything without a reason.

But there had been no pulse. No pulse meant the heart had stopped beating, and even if brain activity could continue for a few minutes afterwards, with a head injury like that he doubted the doctors would have been able to get Sherlock’s heart restarted in time. Because Sherlock must have hit the ground, even if he hadn’t seen it, because what else could have stopped the--

John suddenly remembered something, a tidbit from his days at medical school, something his instructor had mentioned once while they were discussing the cardiovascular system. Pressure, he had said, applied directly to the axilla, can stop the blood flow to the wrist, making it appear as if the person has no pulse. If any of you see a magician who can magically stop and start his pulse at his will, ask him to try it without the tennis ball under his arm.

A ball under your armpit will cut off the circulation to your arm, stopping your pulse. It was stupid, a random trivia fact that he’d suddenly remembered. Completely ridiculous, except . . .

Except Sherlock had been playing with a rubber ball the night before he’d died. John remembered it because Sherlock had spent a good deal 2 a.m. to 4 a.m. bouncing that damned thing against the wall to help him “think.” Sherlock had many ways of helping him think, many of them quite disruptive to helping other people think, but this, John had noted at the time, was a new one. If he had kept that ball with him on the rooftop--

Suddenly John stopped, because if he allowed himself to continue down this train of thought he knew there was no going back. But as he acknowledged this he knew it was already too late and that he had flung himself down this path with a reckless abandon that ensured he would have to see it through. So, tentatively, like inching into an ice-cold pool, he tested it out.

Was it possible that Sherlock . . . was _alive?_

It wasn’t completely unheard of, for someone to successfully fake their death. Irene Adler had managed to pull it off and Ian Monkford would have gotten away with it if Moriarty hadn’t put Sherlock on his scent. And if there was anyone who do it so convincingly so as to fool everyone, of course it would be Sherlock.

But was he just twisting the facts to create the solution he wanted? Was he so desperate for this story to have a happy ending that he would delude himself into thinking the impossible possible? No, he needed something more substantial than wild speculation. He needed to find proof. First of all, he had to test his logic. Only taking the time to slam the lid of his laptop shut, he grabbed his coat from the chair and ran out the door.

 

Facing St. Bart’s this time was different. Now he wanted to be here, wanted to look up at the rooftop where Sherlock had stood so he could confirm what he’d realized in his flat. Squinting against the afternoon sun, John backed up until he reached the spot where he was pretty sure he’d stood on that day. He looked away from the roof’s edge down to the curb--which was blocked by the smaller building in front of it.

John’s heart sped up. There was no doubt left now, there was no way he could have actually seen Sherlock hit the pavement. Not from this location.

_Turn around and walk back the way you came now._

Heart now running a decathlon, John went through the chain of events. Sherlock had jumped, disappeared behind the building but presumably had reached the ground. John had run forward only a few steps when he’d been hit by the cyclist. The cyclist who somehow hadn’t seen him in the road and who hadn’t bothered to stop after hitting him. It had delayed him--how long? He’d hit his head so he wasn’t sure, but it might, just might, have been long enough for Sherlock to set himself up, leaning on his side so that the pressure from the ball under his armpit would cut off his pulse by the time that John reached out to take it. But that still didn’t explain how Sherlock had survived the three-story fall onto the unyielding pavement. There was something else missing--there had to be. John thought hard, searching his memories for the missing piece.

There had been a truck. A truck parked outside the hospital that hadn’t been there when the paramedics took Sherlock away. John thought back. He was sure, there was a truck and then there wasn’t. It must have driven away while he was running over. A strange thing for a driver to do after watching a man jump to his death right in front of him. If Sherlock had aimed just right . . .

It could be possible. It could just be possible. A bit of misdirection, a slight of the hand--hadn’t Sherlock told him as much?

_It’s a trick, it’s just a magic trick._

“My god.” John felt light-headed, in fact his whole body felt light, as if he might suddenly become untethered from the earth and float off into space.

But it still wasn’t enough, so he forced himself to continue with the recreation of the scene, only now he left himself standing on the street and followed Sherlock as the paramedics carried him on the stretcher into the hospital. He had been able to fool John and the small crowd of spectators, but the doctors would have been sure to notice that their “lifeless corpse” was still breathing. He would have needed someone on the inside, someone who could get him safely out of the way and forge the paperwork for someone else’s body to be lowered into the grave. He would have needed--

“John?”

Molly stood behind him, clearly just heading back to work from lunch, and with her appearance John suddenly remembered something she’d said that had seemed off to him, but at the time he hadn’t known why.

_It’s just that he’s always so direct . . ._

Not “was,” “is.” It’s just that he _is_ always so direct. Strange for her to still be using the present tense four months after Sherlock had been supposedly buried in the ground. Molly smiled at him, and John remembered a trick Sherlock had taught him during the Janus Cars case.

Molly, how are you?” he said, smiling back, hoping to bring her guard down.

“Fine. Were you just in there looking for me?” she said, gesturing at the hospital. “Sorry, I was out for lunch but if you need help with something now--?”

“Thanks, but actually I was just out getting some air. I guess I was so used to taking walks to cool my head whenever Sherlock drove me up the wall it’s become a bit of a habit. but you know how he can be,” he said, suddenly switching into the present tense. “Moody and silent for days on end until suddenly he decides that three hours of Tchiakovsky is exactly what the flat needs at 3am.”

Molly smiled sadly.

“I’m sure that was difficult to live with. Sherlock’s certainly not the easiest of flatmates, I imagine.”

John thought his heart might have skipped a beat, but he tried not to let it show, keeping up with the charade.

“You have no idea. Sometimes I wonder why I put myself through it.”

“He means well. I suppose it was just--”

“Meant.”

“Sorry?”

“You mean, ‘He _meant_ well,’ don’t you?

“I--” Molly paled and became very flustered, a state in which John knew she wouldn’t be able to lie very well. “Of course I meant--”

“Because that’s not the first time you’ve talked about Sherlock in the present tense, is it?” John interrupted, not giving her a chance to recover herself, another trick he had picked up from Sherlock.

“It's not--”

“I’m sure it’s hard to remember,” John went on, pulse racing as he plunged into the deep end, “helping someone fake his own suicide must mean you have to keep reminding yourself he’s supposed to be dead.”

Molly gaped at him, eyes wide in a brilliant impression of a goldfish.

“How did you--”

“So it’s true then.” John considered himself a fairly steady man, but at this he actually staggered back a few paces. Molly seemed to realize her mistake and was now looking absolutely horrified.

“John--”

“He’s alive.” It came out as barely a whisper, but the those two words were enough to send poor Molly into a panic. She grabbed him by the arm and practically dragged him to the side of the hospital, making frantic shushing noises while looking around to see if anyone was nearby.

“John, please, you can’t--”

“My god. My _god._ ”

“I told him he should have--oh now what do I do?” Molly kept tugging at her hair and biting at her lip. John would have felt sorry for alarming her so much if he wasn’t busy having a bit of a moment himself. He leaned/slumped against the wall, dimly aware of what was going on around him but mostly in a sort of trance. He was afraid that if he were to move he would fall over, and he’d be damned if he fainted in the middle of the street. Meanwhile, Molly seemed to have come to a decision at last.

“Stay here, alright? I’ll go in for just a minute, explain that something’s come up, and then I’ll take you out for coffee and we can talk about this. Okay? John? Please stay here?”

John mumbled something that Molly seemed to take for assent, for she dashed inside the hospital, leaving him alone. But John had no intention of staying. He reached into his pocket, dialed a number, and held his mobile to his ear. After about ten seconds, the man on the other end picked up.

“Well, this certainly is a surprise. To what do I owe the pleasure of your call, John?”

“Where is Sherlock? And if you don’t give me a straight answer so help me God, Mycroft, I will shove that pointy umbrella up your arse so far that everything you eat will taste like nylon for a week.”

“ . . . Why don’t we discuss this in the car?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trying to get these out more regularly--this one took awhile though. Hopefully John figuring it out is plausible with what he already knew. Wish I knew someone in the medical profession though. I've heard of stories where peoples' hearts keep beating after they've died, which would have been great to incorporate here, but as I know next to nothing about the medical profession myself, I decided to go another route.
> 
> So, bit of a delay getting it all together, but the next one is almost entirely written so that shouldn't be too long in coming.


	13. Haven

When the black car pulled up to the curb, John got into it without hesitation. As they pulled away from the hospital, John thought he saw Molly emerge from the front entrance, looking around for him. He would have to apologize to her, once this was all over. But first . . .

John turned to face Mycroft, who was sitting in his usual rigid stance, his umbrella propped under his hands, silent, clearly waiting for John to make the first move.

“He’s alive?”

“Is that a question or a statement?”

“Is he?”

“You saw him fall with your own eyes, John.”

“And you still haven’t answered my question.”

The corners of Mycroft’s mouth twitched, and John thought he saw his eyes soften as he looked at him with, well on anyone else John would have called it fondness but with Mycroft he wasn’t sure.

“I can see why my brother values you so much.”

Present tense. John’s chest tightened, but before he could say anything else Mycroft continued.

“You took a great risk, assuming that I was aware of the situation. What made you think I was involved? After all, Sherlock and I did not part on the greatest of terms.”

“You two were never on the greatest of terms, but that has never stopped you looking after him before.”

“Nevertheless, it was a dangerous move. Though I suppose you wouldn’t understand that, things being as they are.”

“Care to enlighten me?”

“I don’t think it’s my place to do so.”

“So then what do we do?”

“If you can spare a few hours, I would like to take you to a safe house where I believe you will find the answers you’re looking for.”

John sighed and rubbed his eyes.

“Would it kill you to be direct, just once?”

Mycroft smiled and turned to look out the window. John felt tempted to throttle him, but that probably wouldn’t help make matters any clearer, although it would make him feel better. John turned to stare out of his window as well, barely paying attention to where they were going and losing himself in his thoughts.

Mycroft had said they were going to a safe house, and John knew who would be waiting for him there. He only hoped he would be ready for it. Because what did you say to someone who’d faked his death in front of you, leaving you with nothing but pain and guilt for four months? John didn’t know what he would, but he did promise himself one thing. The second he saw him, he was going to punch Sherlock in the face. It was the least he deserved after making him go through all this alone.

The sound of the car’s tires turning onto a dirt road jolted John out of his thoughts. They continued along a small road surrounded by trees which indicated that they were somewhere in the countryside. After about ten minutes, the trees opened up and John saw a small cottage up ahead. It looked like something out of a fairy tale, and was covered with overgrown ivy and other plants, as if the earth was trying to swallow it up. John turned to look at Mycroft, who nodded and opened the door.

The inside of the cottage was more well-maintained than the outside, although there was barely any furniture save for a table, some chairs, and a small, dark green sofa. There were no pictures or decorations on the walls, which sported faded, tan wallpaper.

Mycroft escorted John into a small, windowless room at the very back. It was nearly barren, save for a table and a chair in the corner, where a figure sat with his back to the doorway. Once John had stepped into the room, Mycroft shut the door behind him without a word. John heard his footsteps fade away and quickly forgot about Mycroft. All of his attention was focused on the man sitting just a few feet away from him. He suddenly found that he couldn’t breathe, but breathing didn’t seem to be all that important anymore as the man stood up and turned to face him. And John knew that everything he’d suspected and hoped for had been right, knew that he never should have doubted.

After all, he’d always known Sherlock Holmes to be capable of great miracles.

 

As he stared at his best friend for the first time in four months, John marveled at how the tiniest details seemed to stand out. Sherlock was thin, much thinner than he’d been when they’d first met, and John wondered if, with no one around to constantly pester/force him into eating, he’d foregone meals on a regular basis again. There was also a tiny scar, just above his left eyebrow, a short line a shade lighter than his pale skin, that hadn’t been there before. John wondered if Sherlock had gotten it in the jump or in some crazed adventure afterwards.

He took in these details slowly, because if he allowed his mind to rush down the train of thought it was currently screaming to follow he wouldn’t be able to keep himself from repeating the same mantra for the rest of his life.

_Sherlock is alive. Sherlock is alive. Sherlock is_ alive.

John had pictured a moment like this a million times in the past, and a million times more on the car ride over. He’d even dreamt about it, although those dreams always ended in blood and grief. And now that it was here, now that he could finally look Sherlock in the eyes again-- _alive, he’s alive!_ \--John felt he could do nothing but gape in disbelief.

Sherlock, for his part, remained perfectly still. He didn’t say a word, perhaps giving John time to accept what he was seeing. John had never been as good at reading people as Sherlock had, but even he could detect the many emotions that flickered in and out of the detective’s face, like a lightbulb winking in protest before it goes out. Pain, guilt, anxiety, joy, and relief. And John knew that Sherlock had missed him just as dearly, and again he wondered why it had had to be like this.

The seconds stretched on into minutes, and slowly John felt the paralyzing shock ebb away from him as his mind cleared. His hands clenched into fists, and he remembered the promise he’d made to himself in the backseat of the car. He took a deep breath, ready to let Sherlock have it.

“You’re not a machine,” he said.

John blinked. Wait, that wasn’t right. What he’d meant to do was to march straight over to Sherlock and punch the bastard square in the face for making him go through that hell for so long. Instead, he found the words he’d longed to say rush out of his mouth, clumsy but desperate to be said. Sherlock, apparently, hadn’t expected this kind of response either. His brows came together as they always had done when he was temporarily stumped over a particularly challenging puzzle.

“What?” he said, and John nearly jumped at the sound of his voice, Sherlock’s voice, not in his head or in a dream but there in front of him and real, so _real._

“The last thing I said to you,” John said, because now that he’d started he couldn’t stop and it was important that he get the whole thing out before he lost his nerve, “before I left you in that bloody lab. When you didn’t care about Mrs. Hudson being shot, I was so angry I called you a machine. But you’re not, you’re a human being with emotions just like everyone else and if only I had seen, if only I had realized that of course you cared about her so something _must_ have been wrong . . . Instead I lashed out and put you into the same box of freaks that everyone else has been shoving you into your entire life and it was wrong of me, I was so wrong.”

John’s breath had grown heavy, blood pounded in his ears and he felt like he was running a kilometer rather than standing in a room and talking to a man who he’d thought dead. Sherlock just stared at him, and John couldn’t read the expression on his face anymore.

“I should have seen it,” he went on. “I should have known, of all people, after I’d promised I was with you. I’m sorry, Sherlock, I am so sorry.”

He closed his mouth with a snap, afraid that if he kept talking his voice would break and he wouldn’t allow himself to break down in front of Sherlock. Instead he looked into the other man’s eyes, waiting for him to say something, anything.

“John Watson, you never cease to amaze me. I thought I would have to grovel and beg for your forgiveness, yet here you are apologizing to _me_. And for something so trivial as a momentary slip spurred on by a deliberately provoking trigger.”

“I still should have known,” John protested, because he felt like he should. He needed to defend himself, to explain why he’d failed.

“I didn’t want you to know,” Sherlock said. “If anything, further investigation on your part would have been a great deterrent at that time and I would have had to figure out a way to divert your attention by some other means.”

John frowned, still reluctant to let the matter go, so Sherlock spoke up again in a voice that commanded the matter be brought to rest.

“John, I do not fault you in any way for what you said or did that day. I know you were still on my side, even though I had made you angry. I never doubted you.”

John released a breath in a great whoosh of air that left him feeling lighter. And then, for the first time in a very long time, he felt a true smile raise the corners of his lips and pin them into place, and he felt that he would never stop smiling for as long as he lived. For as long as Sherlock still stood before him. Sherlock’s mouth rose to reciprocate him, not in a smirk or the tiny half-smiles he gave on occasion when John had said something amusing or halfway-clever, but a true, honest-to-god smile that John hadn’t realized how much he missed.

“You were going to grovel?” John asked after a moment, still grinning like an absolute idiot. Sherlock grew serious again.

“It was an option that I considered, although admittedly as a last resort.”

“I’ve never seen you grovel for anyone, not even for a case.”

“Well it’s hardly dignifying. I should know after all the times people have come groveling to me.”

John chuckled. Sherlock frowned as if he wasn’t sure where John had found the humor in that sentence, and that little motion, so typical of him, made John laugh even more.

“Is this the hysterical portion of the shock process?” Sherlock asked.

“Might be,” John said, but he manage to get himself back under control. Sherlock pulled a phone from his pocket and checked the time.

“I expect you’d like an explanation as to how I survived?” he asked, sending out a quick text message as he spoke. John hadn’t been thinking of that, but found that, yes, he would very much like to know.

“That would be nice,” he said. “I did figure some things out,” he added. “Like how you used that rubber ball to stop your pulse when I felt for it after you fell. And that you got Molly to help fudge the paperwork so no one would suspect there was anyone else in that grave but you.”

Sherlock nodded, but John got the impression that he was only half-listening.

“I do intend to divulge all the details to you later on,” he said, pocketing his phone and taking up his coat from the back of the chair. “Unfortunately, I find myself very much needing to be elsewhere at the moment, so I’m afraid the exposition will have to wait.”

John nodded. “Where are we going?”

Sherlock paused in the middle of buttoning up his coat and John realized with a hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach that maybe Sherlock didn’t want him tagging along this time.

“I mean,” he said, “if you’d rather I just stay behind--”

“You find me miraculously back from the dead after I tricked you, confessed I was a fake, and proceeded to let you continue to believe I had died for four months and yet when I offer no immediate explanation as to my actions you offer to help me although I have not given any indication as to what I am doing or what such help would involve?”

“Yes,” John said, as if it was the most obvious answer in the world. And to him, it was. “Of course, it’s quite possible I’ve gone off the deep end at some point in the past month. Did I mention I’ve been hearing your voice in my head lately? Even when you’re dead you’ve got to have the last word on everything.”

“You truly are a wonder, John Watson,” Sherlock said, with such fondness in his voice John couldn’t help the spark of pride that flared within him. “Well, come on then. Mycroft will be waiting in the car and he can explain the immediate details to you while I plan.”

Sherlock finished doing up his coat and stepped forward to walk past John and out the door.

“Sherlock, wait.”

Before he could make it out the door and back onto the track of whatever mad venture he was up to now, John reached out and pulled Sherlock to him, enveloping him in a tight hug. The difference in their heights was one thing that hadn’t changed, so John could only reach up to grasp the fabric of Sherlock’s coat right over his shoulder blades, but it really didn’t matter as long as he could touch some part of him. He could feel the wool beneath his fingertips and the warm body underneath it. He could feel Sherlock’s back expanding as he breathed and knew that in his chest there was a living, beating heart.

“You’re really back this time,” John said quietly into Sherlock’s chest. “You’re real.”

Sherlock’s body had stiffened in surprise at the initial contact, but now he relaxed and tentatively placed his arms around John’s shoulders, his breath brushing against the top of John’s hair as he spoke.

“Yes, I’m real, John. I’m sorry for deceiving you, but I’m back now. I won’t leave you in the dark again.”

And John believed him. The apology, rare as it was, was unnecessary. When Sherlock Holmes spoke, it was to state a fact, and in that moment John knew his friend had really returned to him.

 

“You’ve been listening to my voice in your head?”

“Don’t worry, it can’t compare to the original. You’re much more obnoxious in person.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally, Sherlock's here! And with him comes the challenge of writing in character without making him sound like a robot.


	14. Enquiries

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **IMPORTANT AUTHOR NOTES:**
> 
> Welp, it's been awhile. I've been away for the usual excuses--senior year at college, immediate post-grad stuff, etc., etc. And it's gotten to the point that I've let this sit so long I'm not too fond of it anymore, which often happens with my writing. On the other hand, I hate to just leave a story half-finished, so I'm going to go ahead and write out the ending to this thing, as best I can remember from the notes I made over a year ago.
> 
> That being said, a lot of things have changed since I last updated this fic--namely, the blessed release of Season 3 of Sherlock (which was wonderful and amazing and I'm not getting into it now because this thing has a character limit). So, here's the important thing to take note of: **I am not going to be following the course of the canon Season 3, but rather the plan I had for this fic when I first wrote it.** This means no Mary, no mustache, and my envisioning of certain characters will be different from how they are canonically portrayed. Not because I didn't like them, but because they simply won't fit into my story, given that I wrote half of it before Season 3 came out. I tend to lean more towards the book interpretation of certain characters' actions and behaviors (particularly John's reaction to Sherlock's return), so they will differ from those portrayed in the TV show. My explanation for Sherlock's fall will be different (although I supported the main theory, which ended up being pretty close to what seems to be the actual explanation, at least from what we've been told).
> 
> Basically, a lot is going to be different from what actually happens, because I had no idea what was going to happen when I started writing this a year ago. But I didn't want to leave it uncompleted on here, and decided to finish it regardless. I'm working hard to release chapters on a regular, weekly basis, and hope to have the whole thing done within a few weeks so I can move on to other things (i.e., my love for the RT/AH fandom).
> 
> If you're still reading this despite the non-canonical changes, you rock. If you were one of my original readers from a year ago, I'm so sorry, and I hope you enjoy.
> 
> And so we go.

John kept staring at Sherlock during the car ride to wherever the detective was taking them. He couldn’t help it, didn’t even realize he was doing it until Sherlock would look up from his phone and frown or raise an eyebrow. Just the novelty of Sherlock sitting beside him again was so wonderfully overwhelming.

“Oh for god sakes, John,” Sherlock said, when he caught John watching him for the dozenth time. “I can barely hear myself think over your thoughts. Was it really that surprising?”

“To see my best friend back from the dead? Yes, it was a bit shocking.”

“Well can you at least direct your shock and disbelief out the window? I need to concentrate.”

Obligingly, John turned to look out the window, but it was less than a minute before he found himself staring at Sherlock again. Sherlock sensed him and sighed loudly.

“I wonder what are people going to say when they hear you can’t take your eyes off me?” he muttered, amused.

“Okay, fine.” John shrugged and fixed his attention onto his left hand instead, watching his fingers tap patterns against his knee. Meanwhile, his mind raced. Where were they going? Who was Sherlock texting? What had he been up to in the past four months? Did it have anything to do with the Adair case Mycroft had been so insistent that he drop? Were they about to head into a dangerous situation? Should he have brought his gun?

“Christ sakes!”

Sherlock shoved his mobile into his jacket pocket and glared at John.

“What?” John asked.

“If I give you an explanation will you put those buzzing hornets of thought to rest and let me focus?”

“An explanation? You mean about you faking your death?”

“No, no, that’s not important right now.” Sherlock waved him off. “I mean about the conspiracy you’ve been stumbling around the edges of for the past few weeks.”

“You mean Ronald Adair’s murder?”

Sherlock nodded.

“I’ve been following your progress very closely. I must say, it’s been interesting seeing you bumble along, taking an excruciating long time to figure out such a simple case, although I’ll admit you far exceeded my expectations of most other people.”

“I think there was a compliment buried in there somewhere.”

“Hush. While you were doing an admirable job pretending to be me and probably would have eventually solved the case in three, four months time, I’ll just save you the trouble and fill you in now. Sebastian Moran did, in fact, kill the affluent Ronald Adair, with a very particular bullet, which I was pleased to hear you recognized immediately.”

“How did--” John cut himself off as realization hit. “Molly’s been keeping you up-to-date on me, hasn’t she?”

“Among others,” Sherlock said. “The ash sample she brought to me was sufficient for a diagnosis but ultimately pointless as related to the murder. Adair was known to smoke the occasional cigar on grand occasions, and what better occasion than his own death?”

“But that would mean he knew he was about to be killed.”

“Of course. According to his phone records it would appear that Moran called him earlier that day, probably to issue Adair’s sentencing.”

“Then why wouldn’t he try to run off? Or notify the police or something?”

“Likely because Adair was familiar with Moran and knew such efforts would be futile. The police can’t do much unless actual action is taken, and any attempt to escape his fate would have been thwarted by Moran’s own persistence and skills. Perhaps Adair simply wanted to die in his own office.”

“Oh.” John felt validated that his initial suspicions of Moran had been correct, though he still wished he could have had the chance to confront the man himself. Sherlock, as per usual, seemed to be reading his thoughts, for he smiled and raised a knowing brow.

“But you have kept busy, haven’t you, Dr. Watson? Investigating corpses, breaking into private homes, initiating random bar fights. I knew you wouldn’t be able to tolerate the tedious life of a practitioner, though you lingered on much longer than I expected.”

“Did you have people from your homeless network trailing me?” John asked, not a bit indignantly. “Reporting to you every time I walked into the--hang on a minute. How did you know about the fight? That didn’t have anything to do with the case.”

“I knew because I was there,” Sherlock said, he gaze shifting to his window. “Which was fortunate for you, considering what those three young men had planned for you as soon as they cornered you in that alleyway outside the bar.”

John remembered that feeling of being followed, only to turn around and find no one there. The thought that if he had only looked back sooner, he might have seen Sherlock standing there . . . it gave him mixed emotions to know how close Sherlock had been. How carefully he’d monitored John’s actions in the months following his “death.” In all that observation, hadn’t he been able to see how much his faked suicide had hurt John? Or did he dismiss such sentimental things as trivial and extraneous, and thus to be ignored?

“You’ve always acted so recklessly,” Sherlock said. “Never with much thought for consequences.”

“Alright, first off, there’s a nice, black kettle I’d like to introduce you to. Second, I only got into that fight defending your bloody reputation.”

“What has a tea kettle got to do with anything?”

“Never mind, it’s not worth it. So where are you taking us, anyway?”

“To the latest crime scene in a much larger investigation that I’ve been conducting for some time.”

“Has it got anything to do with those random disappearances in the papers? Are you trying to figure out who’s behind it all?”

“There’s no need to do anything like that,” Sherlock said, as the car screeched to a halt. John looked out the window to see they had parked outside a cheap lodge.

“And why not?” he asked as Sherlock opened the car door.

“Because I’m the one causing them,” Sherlock said, winking at John and slamming the door behind him.

 

Sherlock ignored John’s questions as they walked down the row of rooms until coming to a stop before Room 18. Sherlock pulled a credit card from within his pocket and stuck it in the crack between the door and its frame.

“You can always rely on cheap accommodations to have poor security,” he said, grinning as the lock slid back.

“Sherlock, are you even listening to me?”

Sherlock sighed and turned to face John.

“Yes, I’m the one responsible for the series of disappearances that has Scotland Yard so predictably baffled. No, I did not just hop around the country abducting people from their homes and hotel rooms. Yes, Mycroft was in on the operation as well. In fact, he’s been coordinating our effects to maximize efficiency. And the point of it all, was that these men were once the strands that made up Moriarty’s very complicated, very dangerous web, and I have taken it upon myself to sever each and every one of them until the whole thing unravels. Satisfied?”

“Alright, relax. It’s been awhile so I’ll remind you that normal people aren’t mind readers. So that’s why you faked your own death? To ruin Jim Moriarty?”

“More or less.”

“Okay, just two more questions and then I’ll shut up for a bit. And don’t give me that look because I deserve a lot more than that after the hell you put me through.”

Sherlock paused, nodded.

“What happened to Moriarty? Both he and Richard Brook disappeared after, after you did.”

Sherlock didn’t answer for a moment, and to John it seemed that his mind was far away from the here and now.

“He’s dead.”

Those two words had a strong effect on John. Bitter satisfaction presented itself first and foremost, with a slight aftertaste of disappointment that he hadn’t been there to see the bastard go down.

“Did you--?”

“He shot himself, on the rooftop of St. Bart’s Hospital. Shortly before I phoned you.”

“Moriarty killed himself? Why?”

“That is a much longer explanation than we have time for right now. You had something else to ask?”

“Oh, right.” John tried to put the news of Moriarty’s suicide out of his head for the time being. “So you’re the one behind all of the abductions that’ve been in the papers lately?”

“Would it be helpful if I started writing cue cards?”

“Then what does I.O.U. mean?”

Sherlock turned back to the door.

“Just an inside joke.” He pushed the door open, the sound of its creaking hinges standing out against the silence outside.

“Whose room are we breaking into anyway?” John asked.

“Sebastian Moran’s of course,” Sherlock said, and stepped into the room. John was about to question whether it was advisable to break into the room of a known skilled assassin, but didn’t for two reasons. One, he was hardly one to talk, since he had trespassed in Moran’s house just recently.

And two, Sebastian Moran was lying dead in the middle of his bed.


	15. Restless

John recognized the face of the man lying before them from his military photographs. He still had that heavy brow and square chin, but what was once fair skin was now pockmarked with scars from the war. His professional military cut had grown out into a scruffy red beard and shaggy, unkempt hair that fell to just below his chin. Moran was lying sprawled on his bed, as though crucified. John leaned over to inspect him as Sherlock texted rapidly on his phone.

“The victim has blisters on the surface of his skin, and several dark stains around his mouth.” John bent down to smell the area just above Moran’s mouth and nose. “Ugh. Yeah, definitely cyanide poisoning. Self-inflicted maybe?”

Sherlock reached over and picked up a bottle of wine that had stood on the bedside table. Next to it was a note that read: “A token of my appreciation for your efforts. --C”

“Maybe not.”

“Does this have to do with Moriarty? Did he want Adair taken out?”

“No. For once, he isn’t pulling the strings, although Moran did work for him on occasion. You remember our first encounter with Moriarty and his not-so-friendly red dots?”

“Of course.”

“Well.” Sherlock gestured towards Moran.

“How do you know all this?”

“I’ve been keeping an eye on Mr. Moran for some time now, ever since he found new employment.”

“With who?”

Sherlock picked up the note and handed it to John.

“Have you ever heard the name Charles Augustus Milverton?”

“No.”

“And, if circumstances were better, you never would. Unfortunately, we can no longer afford that luxury, so I’ll be brief.” Sherlock stared directly at John, as if his eyes could drive the point home even further. “Charles Augustus Milverton is the most unpleasant, loathsome, despicable man you will ever meet.”

“I doubt it. I’ve already met Moriarty, remember?”

Sherlock shook his head emphatically.

“James Moriarty at least had the good graces to rely on his own cunning and resources to accomplish his ends. Milverton leans upon the misdeeds and faults of others to get what he wants.”

“What do you mean?” John asked, but Sherlock had already moved on.

“Moran was under Milverton’s employment as a sort of enforcer--making sure those under Milverton’s greasy thumb stayed there. But he operated outside of his jurisdiction when he tried to settle his grudge with Ronald Adair, and paid a high price for his disobedience.”

“So Adair’s murder wasn’t a hit?”

“No. Just a squabble between cards companions. Silly thing to get shot over. Of course, we tried to get the police to dismiss it as a suicide. With Moran involved, it was simpler to keep the matter in our own hands, and not let Scotland Yard blunder around, ruining everything with their incompetence. Mycroft used some of his connections to interfere from a distance, though we never expected the Detective Inspector to be so tenacious.”

“Actually, he’s Detective Constable now,” John said. Sherlock ignored him.

“After he realized the folly of his actions, Moran must have tried to make a run for it. He was unsuccessful, obviously.”

“So what now?”

“I don’t know.” Sherlock looked extremely put out as he stared at Moran’s body lying on the bed. “We were hoping Moran would end up leading us to Milverton, but now that he’s gotten himself killed, our best lead has dried up. It’s incredibly inconvenient.”

“You have nothing else to go on?”

“Milverton has been scrupulous in covering his tracks. Even my brother, using all of his resources, has been unable to determine where he is or a means of contacting him. Quite embarrassing, as I take pleasure in reminding him, but inconvenient for our purposes. So we are forced to wait until he makes another move, and hope it will yield some helpful information.”

“Or you could just phone him.”

“Never mind the cue cards. I’ll just write down the bullet points on post-it notes and stick them to your forehead. This man does not leave a trail. We have no way of contacting him, John.”

“Yes, you do.”

Sherlock sighed and closed his eyes. John knew that look. It was the dear-God-that-I-don’t-believe-in-please-give-me-the-strength-to-not-strangle-this-idiot-for-saying-such-stupid-things look. As John reached into his pocket for his mobile, he couldn’t keep himself from smirking slightly. Sherlock opened his eyes.

“And what could possibly make you think that?”

“Because,” John said, holding up his phone so that Sherlock could view the name on the screen, “I’ve got his number.”

Some moments, John thought, made all the other crap in life seem bearable. Like taking a warm bath after a tiring day, or going through an entire shift at the practice without having to inspect some bloke’s testicles. Sherlock, dumbfounded and blinking rapidly the way he always did when he was caught off guard, was one of those moments.

“It’s okay, you take your time,” John said smugly. Sherlock closed his mouth and frowned.

“That’s not his number.”

“Yes it is.”

“No it isn’t.”

“Who needs forehead post-its now?”

“Where would you even get his number?”

“I’m a very resourceful person.”

“No you’re not.”

“....”

“Okay yes, sometimes you are, but that’s still not his number.”

“Are we being five years old now? Is that what we’re doing?”

“My brother has the unlimited resources of a man who only refrains from becoming Prime Minister because it would be too big a step down for him, and I’m, well, me. With all our efforts we couldn’t even find so much as Milverton’s birth certificate. Up until about five minutes ago, you had no idea who the man even was, so how could you _possibly_ have his phone number?”

“I took it off Moran’s phone.”

“You--what? When?”

“When I went over to Moran’s house to try and confront him. He wasn’t there but he’d left his mobile on the nightstand in his bedroom. I searched through it and saw that he’d texted someone named “Chuck” recently. Given what’s just happened, it’s not a stretch to figure out that “Chuck” is this Charles person you’ve been talking about.”

“But Lestrade didn’t find a phone when he went back to search the house.”

“No,” John didn’t even both to ask how Sherlock could have known that. “I assumed Mycroft had something to do with it, to stop me from continuing with the case.”

Sherlock’s brows came together, puzzled.

“No, we were unaware there was a phone in the house. I assumed Moran had it on his person but perhaps not. We could search this room but I think that would be pointless. Milverton, or likely someone working for him, must have retrieved the phone after you left. Fortunately, you missed each other.”

“Fortunate for him. I went prepared.”

The corner of Sherlock’s mouth twitched in the familiar half-smile.

“Send that contact information to my phone,” he said.

“What’s your number?”

“It’s still the same,” Sherlock was already busy texting, fingers tapping rapidly on his screen.

“You faked your own death to stay hidden for four months but didn’t bother to get a new phone?”

“What for? No one ever texts a dead man.”

 

John had thought he and Sherlock would immediately set out on Milverton’s trail, hunting the criminal down before he even knew they were on to him, just like the old days. What he had _not_ expected was Sherlock’s instructions to return to his daily routine as if nothing had changed.

“But everything’s changed!” John said. “You’re back! Moriarty’s dead! We can prove your innocence! People have already begun to question it, and now that you’re alive--”

“But I’m not,” Sherlock interrupted. “I’m still dead and still a lying fraud. It is an optimal position to be in for our situation. Once we’ve dealt with Milverton, then we can announce my return to the dumbstruck masses. But until that time, my absence is our best offense.”

“What are you even planning to do?” John asked. “You’ve barely told me anything about this Milverton bloke. Are you trying to send him to jail? Kill him?”

“I want to expose him,” Sherlock said. “If I can unearth the roots he has sunken into this city, I can bring down the very foundation of his entire organization.”

“What organization? Would it kill you to be specific for once?”

But Sherlock wasn’t listening again. He’d picked up a call on his phone and was focused on whoever was on the other end. John would have banged his head against the wall in frustration if he thought it had the slightest chance of helping. It really was like the old days.

When Sherlock hung up his phone he seemed surprised to still see John standing there.

“John, please believe me when I say that this is the best way to ensure I can come back for good. Once I’ve exposed Milverton for the worm he is, everything can be as it was before. I’ve trusted you with my life countless times. Now I need to trust in your silence.”

So of course John had had to listen to Sherlock and go about his day pretending that everything hadn’t changed in the past twenty-four hours. It wasn’t as difficult as he thought it would be. Most of the people he ran into on a daily basis had only followed Sherlock’s work in the news, and none of them had known the man personally. It was only when John thought of people like Lestrade, who had known and continued to defend Sherlock even after everything that came out in the media, that it became difficult to hold his tongue. At least twice a day, John would be on the verge of calling or texting Lestrade the news. But he had given Sherlock his word that he wouldn’t tell a soul, so each time he put his phone away. Mrs. Hudson, of course, was the hardest one to think about.

On Monday, John returned to work at the practice, arriving before Sandra and Rupert, as he usually did. He forced himself to focus on the day’s allotment of patients, including a woman would wouldn’t stop talking about her daughter’s “hipster” phase and a teenager John had to ask five times to put away his mobile phone.

“Hang us, give us a mo,” the young man said when John looked up from his medical records to see him absorbed in the tiny screen yet again. John knew that young people could get obsessed with social media but for god’s sake, was it too much to ask to keep his phone in his pocket for the twenty minutes this exam would normally take?

John took a deep breath, suppressed the uncomfortably familiar urge to strangle someone, and asked his patient again to please put his phone away until he had completed the examination.

“Just a sec,” the kid said. “Someone just tweeted a photo of Piers Morgan in ghastly maroon trunks. I can see why he prefers those loose-fitting suits.”

It was a long day. As was the next day and the day after that. John wanted to text Sherlock, get an idea of what was happening, but the dead man walking had instructed John not to try and contact him in case his attempts were traced or observed by undesirable parties. Regardless, John was only going to give Sherlock three more days. Then he’d start being reckless again.

Finally, after five days of silence, the screen on John’s mobile lit up.

_It’s time. Meet me at the flat. Come prepared._


	16. Lockdown

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posting this a bit early since I'll be at NYCC this weekend. Definitely more than halfway through at this point, but still have a ways to go.

“I probably should have guessed you were the one renting out the flat,” John said as he stepped into their living room. Now that Sherlock was there, the dusty old flat seemed to have taken on a new vivacity.

“Yes, Mycroft was very amused when you warned him about the ‘suspicious character’ using our rooms,” Sherlock said, rummaging around in the kitchen.

“Have you told Mrs. Hudson you’re back yet? She’s been devastated not having you around, although I imagine it must be nice to have tenants who don’t mix food with body parts.”

Sherlock poked his head around the kitchen doorframe and made a face at John.

“She’s fine. I’ll get around to telling her eventually, when I’m not so busy.”

“Just going to put it on your to-do-list?”

“Maybe I’ll just send out a mass text, get it over with in one go.” Sherlock ducked back out of sight. “Don’t go near the windows.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s going to make things far more unpleasant for me if you wind up with a bullet through your head.” Judging by the muffled quality of Sherlock’s voice, he had stuck his head into the fridge and was rummaging around. “Seems four months is past the expiration date for the thumbs. Pity, I was making excellent progress on slowing the skin cell degeneration process.”

John frowned and glanced towards the windows that overlooked the street outside. And then he blinked and looked again.

Sherlock was sitting by the window.

“Sherlock?”

“What?” Sherlock called, his voice definitely coming from John’s left. John walked closer, peering at the figure whose features were washed out by the sunlight pouring through the glass panes. It was only when he was just a few feet away that John realized the person sitting there wasn’t alive. Someone had taken a store mannequin, put a dark, curly wig on it and dressed it up in one of Sherlock’s coats and scarves. From across the room, the resemblance was uncanny, and from the street below, no one would be able to tell the difference.

“Sherlock, what is this?”

“Hmm?” Sherlock stepped out of the kitchen holding a bag containing some indescribable horror in an extreme state of decay. “Oh yes, that reminds me.”

Careful to avoid stepping directly in front of the window, Sherlock hopped from John’s old armchair to his own, then onto the desk where he set the bag down on a stack of cobwebbed books before crouching below the level of the bottom sill and reaching out to grab a series of sticks that were attacked to the dummy’s arms and head. He moved these around, making it appear as though the fake Sherlock was typing, speaking on the phone, little movements that from a distance would make the figure seem life-like. With sudden realization, John remembered seeing the shadow of a familiar figure by the window after his first visit with Mrs. Hudson. After a few minutes of this, Sherlock made the figure stand up and walk out of sight, carelessly tossing it into John’s armchair as he returned to the kitchen. The bag of rotten flesh lay forgotten on the desk.

“What was that all about?” John said.

“While I am prone to great periods of inactivity from time to time, it would be a bit unusual if I didn’t move from my seat at the window for weeks on end,” Sherlock replied. “Hence, the show.”

“For what audience?”

“Charles Augustus Milverton, of course. Damn, the toes have gone to rot as well.”

“Okay, there’s a lot about this scenario that I’m going to need clarification on but first off what the hell are you doing in there?” John walked into the kitchen using the hall doorway to see that Sherlock was kneeling on the floor with the refrigerator door wide open, surrounded by containers of food and other things that would have made the most seasoned health inspector weep. “You’re choosing now, of all times, to clean out the fridge?”

“I’ve always been meaning to get around to it,” Sherlock said, sniffing a jar of eyeballs before putting them back on the shelf. “If we’re going to be here for the next few days we might as well keep ourselves occupied.”

“ _Days_? What do you mean _days_? Sherlock?”

“Of course, it could be a matter of hours but I think days is more likely. Possibly weeks but I’m sure Mycroft could nudge things along if need be.”

“You’re doing that thing where you assume I can read your thoughts. Which is incredibly annoying, if you remember.”

“Our goal is to lure Milverton out of hiding. To do that, we need to make him come to us, and that requires staying put for the time being.”

“Sherlock, I can’t stay here. I’ve got a life--”

“No you don’t.”

“Well, I’ve got a job, and I can’t just up and vanish all of a sudden.”

“It’s easier than you think it would be.”

“That’s not funny.”

“If you say so.”

John bit his lip, considering.

“So, I hang out here with you during the day and come back in the morning?”

“Of course not. With the flat being monitored neither of us can leave until everything’s finished.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“Why not?”

“For, I don’t know, at least a dozen reasons.”

“Which are?”

“Well for starters, I haven’t got any of my things with me.”

“I can have someone visit that closet you call an apartment and pick up some spare clothes.”

“And my job?”

“You’ll call in sick. You’ve been pushing yourself too hard lately and that flu that’s been going around has finally caught up with you.”

“What am I supposed to do all day?”

“Read, practice meditation, take up embroidery? I could have your laptop brought here. Apparently _Game of Thrones_ is a must-see.”

“Well what if I don’t want to spent the next week or so cooped up in the flat with you?”

Sherlock shrugged off this notion as though it were preposterous.

“I don’t see what there is to be so worked up about. We could always play _Cluedo_.”

“No. Never again.”

“Oh come on, I’ve been _dying_ to play it.”

“Still not funny.”

“And we’ll need to get some groceries delivered,” Sherlock said, jumping tracks yet again. “Of course, the current hazard level of our kitchen might be an issue.”

John sighed heavily and rubbed at his face, feeling very tired.

“Alright, but after the kitchen’s been detoxed you owe me a proper explanation.”

“Fine. Do you think I should put the brain in a separate container before throwing it out?”

 

Four hours and two very disgusting bags of garbage later, Sherlock and John were seated across from each other in their respective armchairs, John having moved the Sherlock dummy against the fireplace. Sherlock had his fingers steepled beneath his chin, as was his habit, and John was sipping tentatively from a recently sterilized tea cup that was formerly home to a handful of withered cockroaches. Although he was itching with questions, John waited patiently for Sherlock to sort out his thoughts.

“I’ve told you that Charles Milverton manipulates people by exploiting their weaknesses,” Sherlock said at last. “What I mean by that is he deals in secrets, and his currency is the deepest, darkest secrets of his victims.

“We put so much of ourselves online these days. The modern era, despite its many scientific and technological triumphs, has fallen prey to the degenerative fads of social media. Twitter, Instagram, Tinder, Tumblr--the list is, regrettably, endless. In Milverton’s hands, that wealth of information is more than enough to destroy anyone, regardless of stature or social class. You and I know this to be true from personal experience, but what Milverton does makes the Richard Brook deceit seem an obvious blunder by a prepubescent computer nerd.”

“How is that even possible? How skilled a hacker is he?”

Sherlock shook his head.

“It’s not his way to tamper with data, just to use it to control others.”

“What do you mean?”

“People slip up every day without even realizing it. A racy comment on a Facebook photo or a picture on Instagram that proves a wife is out at dinner when she told her husband she’d be working late. Milverton once blackmailed a politician by threatening to inform his wife of his affair with his campaign manager, a fact he gleaned from the politician liking one too many of the man’s statuses on Facebook.”

“And that was enough for the wife?”

“More importantly, it was enough for the adulterous husband.”

“So he blackmails people. Why? What does he gain in exchange?”

“It’s not about what he wants, but what he may desire in the future. Milverton safeguards this information as a precaution. Should he require something or feel challenged, he can threaten to expose that person’s secrets. It is usually enough to get them to comply with his wishes.”

“But surely there’re only so many people he can keep track of. How many people does he monitor like this?”

“Everyone.”

“Everyone in London?”

“No, John. Everyone. The entirety of England is under his thumb. And a few foreign celebrities and government workers as well.”

“That’s not possible.”

“Milverton’s network is extensive. He does not operate alone, although he entrusts no one with his actual identity. Charles Augustus Milverton is likely an alias, one of many that he uses to protect himself.”

“So you want to expose him.”

“Yes. Milverton has many enemies, and the only thing that protects him is his anonymity. Once we reveal who he is, we can take action against him.”

“And how are you going to lure him out?”

“By offering him the perfect bait.”

“Which is?”

Sherlock smiled.

“Me.”


	17. Outrage

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Reminder that half this chapter was written before Season 3 with a stronger leaning towards the book characters' personalities than the shows. Sherlock just wants to play _Cluedo_.

“Knight to E3.”

“For the last time, Sherlock, I am not playing chess with you.”

“Ooh, Bishop to D4. Quite a poor decision, John.”

“Just because you say you can predict all of my moves, does not mean I am actually participating.”

“Queen to A2, and check.”

“I am sitting on the couch, on the other side of the room. I am in no way, physically or mentally, involved in this imaginary match you’ve concocted for yourself.”

“Pawn to C6. Honestly, John, it’s like you’re trying to lose on purpose.”

“You are delusional, and I am ignoring you.”

“Queen to C6. Queen takes pawn. Aaaand, checkmate.”

“Thank God.”

“Best five out of seven?”

“Alright, fine! We’ll play bloody _Cluedo_!”

“Excellent. Why don’t you set up the board while I make a phone call.”

For the most part, that had been their routine for the past four days. Sherlock and John would preoccupy themselves in the flat, and at least once a day Sherlock would use one of his dozen spare mobiles to phone or text the number John had given him. The tip was always the same: someone had seen movement in the famous Sherlock Holmes’s old flat, as well as a suspicious-looking figure often found near the window.

“Milverton’s reach may extend to anyone but he prefers the rich and powerful,” Sherlock had explained. “To add me to his collection by threatening to expose my faked suicide as a shameful escape from the accusations pressed against me would be irresistible to him.”

“But you’re planning on revealing yourself anyway,” John had replied. “What difference does it make if Milverton does it?”

“You underestimate the power of bias,” Sherlock said. “In his hands, Milverton can spin my tale any way he wants. The consequences of him revealing what I’ve done would be far worse than if it were to come from me.”

So they laid out the bait, and they waited. The two of them would take turns moving around the Sherlock dummy, careful to stay out of sight. Of course, they had no way of knowing if they were actually being observed, but they had to keep the performance up in case Milverton decided to pursue the lead they were feeding him.

Four days, however, was a very long time to be cooped up. Especially if you were sharing a small flat with Sherlock Holmes. Although he was able to discuss matters with Mycroft from inside, Sherlock would still undergo periods of restlessness from all the inactivity. John, of course, was used to Sherlock’s “bored” spells, but whether he felt out of practice after four months or the shock from Sherlock’s return had finally worn off, tensions were running high, although the all-seeing consulting detective seemed strangely oblivious.

“So are we eliminating self-sabotage as a viable option this time? I admit, it does make the game a touch more difficult, even if it is wrong.”

At first, John had been excited. They were staking out a criminal responsible for blackmailing thousands of people across the country. His days were blissfully abnormal again. So why did he get this horrible feeling in his gut whenever he looked at Sherlock?

“Do I get extra points for unraveling group conspiracies to murder? Professor Plum and Miss Scarlett are clearly working together based on their positions and the designs of their clothing. I suspect a love affair but it may be too soon to tell.”

Everything had gone back to the way it was before. So why was he so bothered by it? Isn’t this what he had wanted?

“What if the murderer used something available in the room in addition to the given weapons? Do the rules say anything about that?”

Because Sherlock was acting as though nothing had changed. From the very first moment, Sherlock had behaved as if the past four months had never happened. John had gone along with it at the beginning because he had been so grateful and relieved to have his friend back. He had assumed that, later, they would be able to talk about it. About what Sherlock had done. But even though they were literally sitting around the flat twiddling their thumbs, Sherlock had never once brought up the subject. John had tried, a few times, to hint at the conversation he wanted to have, but each time Sherlock either pretended not to hear him or switched onto a different topic.

“Who invented this game anyway? It could use some major improvements. John? Are you going to roll or continue to stare at the board?”

“Sherlock, where did you go?”

“To the library. It seemed the likely place to start looking.”

“No, where did you go after you disappeared?”

“I told you, I was hunting down criminals associated with Moriarty. I’ll just roll for you then, shall I?”

“And where, specifically, did you hunt these people?”

“Here and there. The details aren’t really important. Do you want to go to the kitchen, or take the secret passageway into the study?”

“Why don’t you give me some unimportant details then. Like, say, exactly how you faked your death. Or why you had to go undercover for so long. Or why you couldn’t tell anyone where you were. Feel free to elaborate.”

“All in good time, John.”

“I think now is a pretty good time to get into it, Sherlock.”

“We can’t talk now, we’re playing a game. I need to concentrate.”

John suddenly lashed out and upended the game board, sending pieces and cards flying across the living room. The tiny figure of Colonel Mustard landed, half-buried, in the ashes in the fireplace. Sherlock didn’t react, merely staring at the space where the game had just been before slowly lifting his eyes to meet John’s.

“Oops,” John said calmly. “My mistake. Didn’t mean to break your concentration.”

Sherlock sighed and leaned back in his chair, his fingers going back up to rest underneath his chin.

“I thought we had moved past this, John.”

“Well, apparently not!” John was starting to breathe heavy, and he fought to remain level-headed. He got up and began to pace, trying to expel some of his built-up energy. Sherlock remained in his armchair, watching him. It made John feel like a caged animal at the zoo and he didn’t like it. “Don’t you give me that look,” he said. “I am not one of your clients, so stop _bloody analyzing me!”_

This wasn’t good. He shouldn’t lose control like this, it wouldn’t solve anything. All he had wanted was a civil conversation. He’d just wanted Sherlock to confide in him. And now he was the one looking crazy while the man in the wrong sat calmly in his chair and would not stop staring.

“Very well,” Sherlock said at last. “Let’s have it out then. Shouting matches are very therapeutic for men of your temperament.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” John said, more out of reflex than anything.

“It means, John. That you clearly have something you want to say. So why don’t you say it so we can return to things as usual.”

“That’s it, that is exactly it!” John said, pointing an accusing finger at Sherlock. “You keep assuming that things can just go back to the way they were, that everything can be as it was before. But they can’t, Sherlock! You can’t just disappear for four months, four months of silence in which you left me alone to _grieve_ for you, to try and piece my life back together without any explanation, and then show up again and expect me to act as though nothing has happened!”

“You seemed to react just fine when you saw me.”

“Because I was in shock! And because I wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt. I was so relieved to see you alive and well, I figured you would fill me in once things settled down. But it’s been _weeks_ , Sherlock, and I’m still fumbling around in the dark while you sit there and play bloody _Cluedo_ as though you never left!”

“Is your issue with my departure or my return?”

“Don’t talk about it like it’s a airline flight! You may have had no qualms about faking your death, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t affect those of us you left behind!”

“Are you trying to imply that I had no stakes in this matter? That I wasn’t aware of the consequences?”

“Were you? Tell me, Sherlock, while I was stuck here, trying to overcome the guilt and loss that you forced upon me, just what were you sacrificing, traveling abroad and saving the world from Moriarty’s evil henchmen?”

“You know why I had to do it, John!”

“No, I don’t, because you never told me!”

Sherlock blinked. He seemed genuinely puzzled, which caught John off-guard enough to diffuse his temper.

“Did I not?”

“Oh, my God. Are you seriously saying you just _forgot_ you hadn’t explained everything?”

“I could have sworn I mentioned it.”

“Unbelievable.”

So Sherlock told John all about his conversation with Moriarty on the roof of St. Bart’s. About the three snipers who were positioned to take out Sherlock’s three closest friends if he didn’t complete Moriarty’s story of the disgraced detective. How he had anticipated such a conclusion and took measures to ensure that he would survive the fall. The explanation wasn’t far off from what John had suspected. Sherlock had aimed his jump carefully to land in the bed of a truck that carried a cushioning air bag that lessened his time to impact. Then, select members of his homeless network had helped him set the scene, pouring fake blood over his face and keeping away any bystanders. Once he was brought into the hospital, Molly took over, ensuring that a different body would be processed with Sherlock’s name on the paperwork (a nameless, homeless man who now resided beneath a headstone with Sherlock’s name on it).

“And Molly wasn’t in any danger at all?” John asked. “Moriarty knew who she was.”

“Moriarty didn’t take her into account when he sent out his assassins. He rather undervalued her, an error which, I fear, we both made.”

“So she put a different body in your coffin,” John said. “Mycroft would have stifled any suspicions about your death, and as far as Moriarty’s henchmen knew, you had fulfilled your end of the deal.”

“Precisely,” Sherlock said. “That is why it was essential for me to remain dead, even after Moriarty’s lie about Richard Brook started to come to light. If anyone who remained loyal to him suspected I had cheated death, they would have gone after you, or Lestrade, or Mrs. Hudson to finish the job.”

John collapsed into his chair. He let Sherlock’s words sink in, felt his brain process them, and tried to sort out how he felt after finally being given the explanation he’d wanted so badly.

“Feel free to apologize whenever you’ve finished taking that all in,” Sherlock said, already resetting the _Cluedo_ board. For a few moments, the room was filled with nothing but the sounds of the game pieces being set back into place.

“I’m not going to apologize.”

“Beg pardon?”

“Sherlock, you think just because you had a reason for doing what you did that it erases everything you put me through?”

“I thought you wanted to know--”

“I did, but that still doesn’t change anything!” John was angry again, and this time he wasn’t entirely sure why. Sherlock had explained himself, just as he’d asked. And it was a pretty damn good excuse. So why was he still unsatisfied?

“Then why should I bother to explain myself if it makes no difference to you?” Sherlock frowned. “I’ve given you my reasons, isn’t that enough?”

“So you had to work alone to bring down Moriarty’s big bad web. You couldn’t figure out any other way besides forcing the people who care about you the most to mourn you without any hint that you might still be alive. And all of that was to protect us?”

“I was under the impression that that’s what friends are supposed to do.”

“Don’t you _dare_ \--”

“Are you honestly proposing that had the situation been reversed you wouldn’t have done the exact same thing?”

“Of course I would have!” John bellowed, and there it was, the source of all his frustrations, because he knew that he would have done anything to protect the people he cared about. Hadn’t he already shown Sherlock that he was willing to die for him? How could he be angry when he now knew Sherlock felt the same way? He couldn’t be, not really, and that infuriated him. Sherlock, observant as ever, seem to read John’s mind like an open book, but he didn’t say anything. John took a moment to compose himself. This wasn’t worth losing his temper over. Still . . .

“I wouldn’t have made you watch,” he said, looking Sherlock square in the eye as he did so. _Keep your eyes fixed on me._ “I don’t care how much it would have added to the illusion, I would never have made you watch me fall. And I would have found a way to tell you I was still alive. I would have trusted you to keep that secret.”

Sherlock blinked rapidly with that wide-eyed expression he used when someone said something that caught him off-guard.

“John,” he said softly, “do you think, after everything that we’ve been through, that I do not trust you implicitly?”

John did not answer him.

“I have always confided in you before, in all my cases,” Sherlock said. “I’ve trusted you with my life, many times, and I have relied on you in a way that I have never done with any other person. I trust you in everything--”

“But not for this,” John said. “You couldn’t trust me with this one, important secret. You let Mycroft know. _Mycroft_ , who handed over your entire life story gift-wrapped to your greatest enemy. You asked for Molly’s help, even though you’ve always been so dismissive of her. But you wouldn’t ask for my help. You didn’t trust me enough to let me know that you were alive.”

“The reason I kept this from you has nothing whatsoever to do with trust.”

“With what then?”

“You know the situation. You know that if any of Moriarty’s men had known I was alive, they would have finished the tasks set to them, and you, Mrs. Hudson, and Lestrade--”

“So you could have brought us all with you!” John yelled. “Honestly, between you and Mycroft I highly doubt anyone would have been able to reach us. We would have been safe enough--”

“Do you honestly think I had not considered it?” Sherlock said. “It would have been simple enough to remove the three of you, place you in a safe house completely undetectable to Moriarty’s men. But do you understand what that would mean? Even the most basic simpletons could have understood what the three of you suddenly disappearing meant, and if they suspected for even a second that I was involved, they would have hidden themselves just as effectively. My greatest advantage so far has been the element of surprise. If I lost that, I might never have fully untangled Moriarty’s web, and you might never have been able to lead a public life again. And what if they had tried to lure you out by going after your family? Your colleagues? Could you have stayed safely tucked away the whole time? If I could have had you by my side for these past few months I would have, you must believe that, John. But I couldn’t, there was no other way.”

John wanted to believe him. He wanted this whole thing to be over with so everything could just go back to normal. Or at least, as normal as things ever got for the two of them. But even if he knew everything Sherlock said was true it wouldn’t erase the past four months. There was no reset button here.

Before John could say anything, Sherlock’s phone buzzed. Looking at John, Sherlock hesitated for the slightest second before checking the screen. Without a word, he turned the phone around to face John.

_Knock, knock, Sherlock Holmes._


	18. Charles Augustus Milverton

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh I want to be done with this. I am so out of sync with this story. Should be able to wrap it up in 1-2 more chapters.

Sherlock nodded at John, who went into the kitchen to put the kettle on and dig out a handful of stale biscuits from the cupboard. Sherlock removed the Sherlock-dummy from the window and threw it unceremoniously into his bedroom before shutting and locking the door. From the corner of his eye, John saw Sherlock position himself in his armchair, waiting to receive their guest.

“You think he’s just going to let himself in?”

“They rather tend to.”

Sure enough, John heard the front door swing open, followed by light footsteps as someone entered the flat.

“Hmm. Smaller than I thought it would be.”

“Sorry I can’t offer you the full tour. I’m sure a man like you can understand the need for privacy.”

“You’ve got a funny way of showing it, mate. I know you’re the one who’s been sending me those ‘tips.’ Did you get sick of being dead or what?”

John, occupied in the kitchen, could only hear the conversation between the two, but Milverton sounded much different than John had imagined he would.

“You don’t seem surprised to see me.”

“In my line of work, Mr. Holmes, not much surprises me. People fake their own deaths all the time. Usually husbands trying to get away from the nagging wife. You’ve uncovered a few such cases yourself, so it’s kind of natural you’d do it as well, innit?”

“Speaking of cases, I found myself involved in some of your handiwork earlier this week.”

“Oh, Seb? Yeah, pity that. I warned him to stay away from Ronald Adair. Ronnie and I, you see, had our own arrangement, courtesy of some intercepted, private photos intended for a lovely, young lady in France. But ol’ Seb was always the type to hold a grudge. And he wanted to settle his debts in a rather medieval-like fashion. It’s a shame. He was a brilliant enforcer.”

The kettle went off and John removed it from the stove, quickly pouring the tea so he could finally get a look at this Milverton character. Sherlock looked over at the sound of the steam whistle, and gestured for John to enter.

“Well, far be it from me to be a poor host. Would you care for some tea? It’s a bit of a tradition for those who seek my demise.”

“What, so you can get traces of my saliva on the rim? You’ll have to try harder than that, Mr. Holmes.”

Sherlock was delivering some clever retort, but John wasn’t listening to him because he was staring at their guest.

“This,” he blurted out, interrupting whatever witty banter the two had going on, “this is the most despicable man you’ve ever met? He’s just a kid!”

“Hey, up yours, Doc, I’m twenty-four.”

The man standing in the middle of the living room, one gloved hand’s thumb busy at the screen of a smartphone and the other flipping John the bird, didn’t look any older than the university students John had nearly gotten into a fistfight with at the bar. He was dressed far better though. John didn’t keep up with the latest fashions, but he knew enough to recognize designer label clothing when he saw it. The young man had an average face, one you would easily look over in a crowd. Standing with a slight slouch, attention directed fully onto his phone, he looked like any other media-obsessed, emotionally-distant teenager. And yet there was something distinctly familiar about him. It took John another moment to place where he had seen him before.

“You’re the kid who came into my office the other day and wouldn’t put his bloody phone away!”

“Oh right, thanks for the physical, Doc. You might want to work on your bedside manner though, you’re a bit cold.”

“You can’t be serious.” John looked over at Sherlock in exasperation, but the detective merely shrugged.

“They start younger each year,” he said.

John wanted to laugh. Here he had been imagining this new, Moriarty-like figure, a man so inscrutably put-together that there were no cracks or weaknesses to exploit. A man who could destroy a person’s entire life with just one phone call. But this was a just a kid. Young people like him were brash and disconnected from mainstream life but ultimately harmless. Surely they could handle him.

The entire time, Charles had not even bothered to look up from his phone. He was busy scrolling through his messages, occasionally tapping out a text or an email, his thumbs moving rapidly across the device. John didn’t think even Sherlock could text that quickly. A few times he lifted it up, as if to see the screen in a better light.

“You’d be smart not to underestimate me, Doc,” Charles said, his eyes still on his phone. “You should know how devastatingly powerful the internet can be. Just look at what your blog did to your partner there. All you need is a starting point, and from there the devoted followers of the online world can spread it and twist it until you can’t even recognize it anymore. People don’t realize how vulnerable they make themselves. That the smallest, most seemingly harmless detail can ruin everything.”

“And certainly no one knows better than you how to exploit those details,” Sherlock said.

“Why, Mr. Holmes, I’m flattered.”

“Why don’t you have a seat and we can discuss why I’ve called you here.”

“What for? I already know why. Got to say, it’s a bit of a desperate move on your part, inviting me in here. I’ve already taken at least a half dozen photos of you. They’ll sit nice and pretty with me until I can decide what do to with them. You think sacrificing something so valuable was worth this sad attempt to find out who I am?”

“What is he talking about?” John turned to Sherlock, annoyed that, as usual, the detective hadn’t bothered to fill him in.

“Charles Augustus Milverton is merely a pseudonym,” Sherlock explained. “No one actually knows his background or true identity. It’s his greatest advantage.”

“And no one’s ever going to find out,” the young man said. “You may be as well-connected as I am, Mr. Holmes, but the difference between us is I _own_ those people. I control them, and I can control exactly what information you’re allowed to have.”

“You can’t possibly keep track of that many people,” John said.

“As I’m sure Mr. Holmes has told you, I don’t work alone. I pay well, and my people can work from anywhere with a wifi signal. If I need to find something on someone, all I need to do is contact whoever I have in that area and the information just flows in. I like to have a little bit of something on all the important people, just in case.”

“Insurance,” John said, thinking back to a woman he had met a long time ago. “Sounds familiar.”

“Ah, you’re referring to the lovely Miss Irene Adler.” Charles smiled to himself. “Now there was a woman after my own heart. She was quite useful to me, until she decided she’d rather throw in her lot with a different class of criminal. I’ve kept an eye on her, of course. I always keep tabs on the people who’ve worked for me. She’s settled rather nicely in America, even got herself a love-mate. The wife’s a real fit bird, I would kill for footage from their honeymoon.”

“Might we not get back to the matter at hand?” Sherlock said.

“Nah, I’ve got to go,” Charles said, though he made no move towards the door. “This chat has been lovely and all, but I’ve had ample material on you two for ages. The ‘not dead’ photos are just eye-catching bonuses for the newspapers to run.”

“What are you talking about?” John said, before Sherlock could reply. “I don’t even have a Facebook page, and Sherlock’s entire life story was already paraded through the media, or did you not notice?”

“Funnily enough,” Charles said, “I don’t need anything you’ve put out there yourself. It’s that simple, and therein lies the beauty of my methods. I’m not sure if _you’ve_ noticed, but whenever you two used to go out solving mysteries, you’d stir up quite a bit of trouble along the way. I wonder what the London public would say if they found out the ‘gas explosion’ that killed twelve people a few years back was actually a bomb set by a madman trying to get to you? Or maybe I could share some of the secrets that were on Irene Adler’s phone before you got a hold of it--I did teach her everything she knows. And,” Charles added, looking up from his phone screen to wink at John, “I know exactly what happened on that cruise case, and not the censored version you originally posted on your blog. What did you call it? The ‘Tilly Briggs Cruise of Terror.’ Do yourself a favor, mate. The next time you decide to impersonate an officer of the law, don’t do it on a ship full of people with iPhones. And don’t even get me started on bed bug incident.”

“An impressive amount of secrets, to be sure,” Sherlock said, taking control of the conversation again. “But nothing particularly fatal.”

“True enough,” Charles said. “I didn’t have anything on you that could permanently blemish your record. I admit, I was pissed off when it looked like that Richard Brook bloke had beaten me to the punch--disgracing the famous Sherlock Holmes. But now, I have a new scandal to use against you.”

“Don’t forget who invited you here.”

“A bloody stupid move on your part, if you don’t mind me saying. You called me here, risked blowing your biggest secret, so that you could get the chance to find out who I am. Once you take away my anonymity, you can properly expose me to the world and I lose all my power over others. Am I right?”

“Perhaps.”

“Right, well, even if you do somehow manage to suck my DNA from the molecules in the air, there’s one thing you haven’t taken into account.”

“And what’s that?”

For the first time since he entered the room, Charles lowered his phone completely and looked Sherlock straight in the eye.

“Who’s to say I’m even Mr. Milverton himself?”

John glanced at Sherlock, but the detective remained perfectly still, his face betraying nothing.

“If I _were_ Charles Milverton, the man with the keys to everyone’s back doors in his pocket and consequently the most hated man in all of Britain, why would I ever meet anyone in person and risk compromising myself? I would just send someone in my place to relay the information back to me. And who’s to say he hasn’t done just that?”

“Perhaps I’m just taking a gamble then,” Sherlock said. “Maybe I’m betting on the fact that you wouldn’t allow anyone else the opportunity to find out a secret this big.”

“Careful, Mr. Holmes. You know what the consequences will be if you’re wrong.”

“Yes, no doubt you’ve already sent copies of the photos you just took to your subordinates.”

“Hardly. The more copies there are of something, the less secure it is. That’s why I never send anything out until I’m ready to use it.”

“Seems like a risk, to keep it all in one place.”

“Many things in life are a risk. That shouldn’t stop us from trying to get the most out of it.”

“I couldn’t agree more.”

“Hmm. Well, this has be loads of fun, but I really do have to get going. I’m a very busy man, after all. I’ll be in touch about the photos. I might even let you choose which newspapers I send them to. So long, Mr. Holmes. Doc.”

And without another word, Charles Milverton left the room. Sherlock and John listened as his footsteps faded down the stairs and didn’t speak until the distant sound of the front door slamming shut echoed up to the flat.

“Alright, Sherlock, what the hell was all that?” John said. “Are you trying to tell me that, that _kid_ is responsible for blackmailing half of the country?”

“Age is not always a factor in the criminal lifestyle. Or that of consulting detectives, for that matter. I, too, got my start at a very early age, if you’ll recall.”

“And what about the photos he took of you? Last I knew, Charles Milverton telling the entire world you are still alive was something we did _not_ want to happen.”

“Of course. If those photos were to make it out to the public under Milverton’s influence I would likely be ruined,” Sherlock said, getting to his feet and walking briskly towards the door. He lifted his coat and scarf off their hook while John stared at him, feeling irritated but also the tiniest bit excited. He could tell from the look in Sherlock’s eyes that something important had just happened.

“Then what was the point of calling him here in the first place?” John asked.

“Because, John, in his rather boastful explanation of his methods, he mentioned a key detail that answers a question I’ve had for a very long time.”

“Which is?”

“It seems the Woman really did learn her security techniques from Milverton.”

And then it clicked.

“Everything he has is on that phone,” John said. “He doesn’t keep copies anywhere else. So if we can get to that phone--”

“We can terminate his hold over every person he’s ever intended to blackmail,” Sherlock finished, and hurried out the door. John only hesitated long enough to grab his own jacket before following him out, leaving the untouched tea to cool on the table.


	19. Kiss and Kill

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally finished and ready to move on to other things. If you've stuck with this since the beginning, sorry it ended up going this way, but I hope you enjoyed the story. It was a bit of a rush job, but the original case goes a similar way. 
> 
> Thank you for reading.

“So where are we headed now?” John asked as they flew down the stairs and out into the street, Sherlock throwing out a hand to hail the nearest cab. John hurried to follow him and almost tripped over a young, dark-haired woman who had been walking down the sidewalk.

“Sorry--” John started, but the woman merely kept her head down and hurried on.

“John, come on!” Sherlock called, having already miraculously summoned a cab from the empty street. John quickly got in and they set off, headed to an address Sherlock gave the driver.

“We’re en route to Milverton’s home,” Sherlock said, surprising John, who didn’t think the detective had even been listening to him.

“And how do you have his address?” John asked. “Assuming that man _was_ Charles Milverton and not just someone else he sent in his stead.”

“It was him,” Sherlock said with confidence.

“How can you know for sure?”

“When I mentioned that we had encountered some of his handiwork earlier this week, he immediately knew I was talking about Sebastian Moran’s death. He also knew the true details of the Ronald Adair murder, of which no one else knows except you and me. It’s unlikely Milverton would reveal his hand in killing Moran to another person just to put on this deception. It would make him vulnerable, and he would never allow that.”

“Alright, fair enough, but how do you know where he lives?”

“Mycroft,” Sherlock answered simply. “He’s wanted to put an end to Milverton’s influence longer than I have. For years he’s been tracking down potential candidates, all of whom showed promising signs of involvement. We’ve used the more persuadable members of his own organization to eliminate some people, coming ever closer to the mastermind behind it all. The man we met today has been under our gaze for quite some time. Mycroft wanted to remove him from the list, because of his young age, but I insisted he remain on.” Sherlock looked positively giddy at one-upping his brother. “Milverton suspected I invited him to our apartment in an attempt to get his fingerprints, hair, anything that could tell us who he is. But I never expected him to be so careless. All I needed to see was his face.”

“So once we get there, what are we going to do? Ask him nicely to hand over his phone?”

“We’re going to break into his house and steal the phone, preferably without being caught.”

“What?” John and Sherlock had done some lawfully-questionable things in their time. There was more than one occasion on which they should have been and _were_ sent to jail. But there was much more to lose if they were caught now.

“Sherlock, if we’re caught breaking into Milverton’s house that will give him the perfect ammo to send to the press, pictures and all. Can’t someone else--?”

“There isn’t time to prep anyone on the situation. Milverton won’t hold onto those photos forever. If we wait too long, we’ll lose our opportunity.”

“But that man never lets go of his phone. I tried to get him to put it away for a twenty-minute appointment and he wouldn’t do it. The only way we’ll be able to get it from him is if we physically restrain him and take the phone away.”

“I don’t think it will come to that. Everyone has to sleep sometime.”

“I’ve been telling you that for years and you never listened.”

“Milverton, for all his failings, is human, and the sleep deprivation that motivates me would only serve as a detriment to him. In his line of work, he needs a fresh and rested mind.”

“So we wait for him to fall asleep, sneak in, and take his phone?”

“Precisely.”

“What are you going to do with the phone once you have it? Give it to Mycroft?”

“No. The secrets on that phone cannot be trusted in the hands of anyone. That’s why I intend to throw it into the Thames the first chance I get.”

They arrived at their destination in fifteen minutes, but Sherlock instructed the cab driver to drop them off half a mile away. When they got out of the cab (Sherlock, incredibly, paying the fare for once), John looked nervously at the crowds of people walking through the busy city.

“Should you be out in the open like this?” he asked.

Sherlock paused to consider the passing pedestrians.

“Fair point,” he said, and promptly reached over to yank John’s jacket from his shoulders.

“Hey!” John started, but was muffled by Sherlock’s coat which was thrown into his face.

“The easiest place to hide is in plain sight,” Sherlock said as he put on John’s jacket. It was far too short for him, and looked rather ridiculous, not to mention bizarre. “People have the hardest time recognizing each other out of context. No one will expect to see me out in the open, and therefore they’ll dismiss it as a coincidence.”

“How can you know that for certain?” John said, shoving his arms into Sherlock’s coat, which was comically large and reached almost to his ankles.

“Because you did.”

And without another word, Sherlock began walking back to Milverton’s house. John stared after him for a moment, and then followed.

Much like Milverton himself, the house they tracked him down to did not stand out in any particular way. From the outside, it looked the same as the houses on either side. They stationed themselves in a park across the street and waited, keeping the building in sight but making sure they stayed out of its. After about an hour, Sherlock silently pointed to a lone figure making its way up the sidewalk. John looked and saw Charles Milverton was walking home, face still buried in his phone. Without looking up once he took a key from his pocket, opened his front door, and disappeared inside.

“So how long do we wait?” John asked.

“Until nightfall,” Sherlock answered. “When he turns out the lights, we’ll approach the house.”

“Why didn’t we just wait until sundown to stake out the house?”

“We had to be sure Milverton was inside.”

“Great,” John said, shifting his weight around on the wooden bench, which felt cold and uncomfortable. It was going to be a long wait.

They sat on that bench for hours, occasionally speaking, but mostly just enjoying each other’s company in silence. Halfway through John got up (after making Sherlock promise that he wouldn’t do anything stupid while he was gone) to get them some food. Sherlock hardly touched his but kept stealing John’s chips. Finally, after what felt like an age, and long after all other lights save for the street lamps had gone out, Milverton’s home finally went dark.

Sherlock and John crossed the street and snuck around to the narrow gap between houses, which they used to gain access to the back of the house. Just as John was about to ask Sherlock how they would get in, Sherlock reached down to an empty flowerpot sitting on the back porch and lifted it, revealing a house key underneath.

“Seriously?” John said, bewildered.

“Everyone keeps a spare key handy,” Sherlock said. “I’m always surprised that criminals are too stupid to remember that.”

Without further ado, Sherlock walked up the steps and inserted the key into the lock.

“What if there’s an alarm?” John whispered.

“Then we’ll have to act quickly,” Sherlock said.

John suddenly wished he’d brought his gun with him. Not that he thought he’d need to use it on a twenty four year-old kid whose only exercise involved typing. But the gun gave him the confidence that he had a back-up plan. Right now, he just had to trust that everything would go as smoothly as Sherlock intended.

Sherlock opened the door to . . . silence. No alarms went off, no security dogs came charging down the stairs. Sherlock and John slipped inside, shutting the door quietly behind them. For a moment they stood listening for any sounds of movement from deeper within the house. When the house remained quiet, John looked to Sherlock.

“The phone will be with him, in his bedroom,” Sherlock said.

“You think there’s any chance this is going to be easy?” John asked. Sherlock smiled.

“What fun would that be?”

They climbed the stairs to the second floor and quickly located Milverton’s bedroom at the end of the hallway. John held his breath as Sherlock opened the door, but they didn’t make a sound as they crossed over the threshold and into the room.

John honestly wasn’t sure what he had expected to see, but Milverton’s room was a surprise. Instead of the simple, put-together casualness of its occupant’s appearance, the room was a complete mess. Newspaper clippings and print-outs from the web were tacked up on the walls in no particular order, while other pages littered the corners of the room. John took a quick look at one of the headlines, squinting his eyes to read it in the dim light.

_Chief Secretary to the Treasury David Laws resigns after accusations of his claiming over £40.000 for second home_

John felt a tap on his shoulder. Sherlock was gesturing towards the bed, a finger on his lips. Charles Milverton lay asleep, sprawled with his arms flung out to the sides of the bed. Clearly his smooth, collective attitude was only a conscious decision. Sherlock pointed towards his left hand and John saw a smartphone clutched between his fingers.

John raised his eyebrows in a gesture that said, _he couldn’t have put it on his nightstand or something?_ Sherlock shrugged in response and walked over to the side of the bed. John almost forgot to breathe as Sherlock leaned over the prone figure, arm outstretched towards their prize.

A loud knocking at the front door almost made John swear, and with the stillness broken, Milverton started to wake up. Sherlock reacted quickly, retreating from the awakening man and pulling John towards the back of the room. Before John knew what was happening, Sherlock had stuffed them both into Milverton’s closet and was peering out at the bedroom through a small crack between the door and its frame. The knocking continued, until Milverton finally got out of bed and went to answer the door, grumbling about the late hour of the night. To John’s dismay, he took his phone with him.

“Now what?” John whispered. “Should we leave?”

“Unless you’re prepared to jump out the nearest window, we stay here for now,” Sherlock answered, his breath tickling John’s ear like a gnat.

“Who do you think it is?”

“Contrary to popular belief, John, I’m not omniscient.” Sherlock paused, and for a moment all John could hear was his breathing. “John, I owe you an apology. For what I put you through.”

“Seriously? You pick now, of all times, to have this conversation?” John was already feeling cramped inside the narrow space and there was a coat hanger jammed into the back of his head.

“Well it’s not like we have anything else to do,” Sherlock countered.

“And this couldn’t have happened while we were sitting on that bench outside for five hours?”

“I had to think of what to say.”

“God dammit, Sherlock.”

“John, you have always been invaluable to me, but I know that I do not express that enough--”

“Sherlock, stop. You don’t have to apologize.”

“But--”

“Look, I’d rather only say this once. I wish I had known, I wish I could have helped you, but I do understand why you did what you did. I don’t like it, and I’m still angry at you for what you put me through but . . . I forgive you. You saved my life, and Lestrade’s, and Mrs. Hudson’s. You sacrificed your reputation to keep us safe. You have been a true friend to me, and whatever happens, I want to thank you for that.”

“. . . Is that it? We’re fine now?”

“You’re not the only one who did some thinking on that bench.”

“Oh, good. Thank you, John.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“I admit I’m a bit disappointed, I’d prepared quite a moving speech.”

“No, seriously, let’s not talk about it anymore.”

“You would have been moved to tears.”

“Please shut up.”

They fell silent and listened to the front door open, then heard voices in conversation. One, Milverton, obviously, but the other was distinctly female. Unfortunately, they were too low for John and Sherlock to make out the words, and more unfortunately, they seemed to be getting closer.

“Angie, it’s the middle of the damn night,” Milverton said from the top of the stairs, judging by the volume of his voice.

“I know, I’m sorry, Charlie, I just had to see you.” The woman’s voice was high, with a slight whine to it.

“I thought you were in a tizzy at me. You weren’t answering any of my calls.”

“I just, needed time to decide what I wanted.”

“And what did you decide?” The voices were right outside the bedroom door now.

“You, Charlie. I want you.”

The bedroom door flung open so hard it banged against the wall before shuddering back into place. Two figures, deeply entwined in each other, stumbled into the room, clearly in the mindset for a good and proper shag. John recognized one of them as Milverton but could not make out the face of the woman in the dark, though she appeared to be older than him. They groped at each other for a few minutes, then the woman started pushing Milverton towards the bed. Milverton tossed his phone onto his nightstand and pulled her closer.

“You have got to be kidding me,” John breathed. A sharp elbow from Sherlock told him to keep quiet, but John was sure he could call in a marching band and it wouldn’t distract these two from each other. Why was it that he always found himself in these uncomfortable situations? He was trapped in a closet with Sherlock--a small closet, where he could feel every gangly limb Sherlock was jabbing into his backside--forced to listen as a horny couple had sex. Why couldn’t he just have been satisfied with being a physician?

“Get rid of your shirt,” the woman said, and Milverton turned around to oblige. John was seriously considering coming out of the closet just to put an end to this, when things took an interesting turn.

While Milverton’s back was turned, the woman straightened up and pulled a gun out from within an inner pocket of her jacket. She pointed it directly at Milverton as the kid turned around. The scene froze, with Milverton staring at the gun, shirtless, still panting from the earlier exertion. John noticed that the woman’s gun-arm was shaking slightly. She had probably never used a gun before in her life, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t prepared to do so now. John wondered if they should do something to help, but a slight pressure from Sherlock on his shoulder told him to stay put.

“Angela, what is this?” Milverton said, his voice surprisingly steady despite the situation.

“I can’t do it anymore, Charlie,” the woman named Angela said. “The manipulation, the phone calls, the demands for company, all with the threat of those messages hanging over my head.” Her voice trembled but the gun became steadier. “I won’t be your plaything any longer!”

Milverton stayed still for a moment, and then to John’s surprise started to walk towards Angela.

“Come on, Angie, it’s not like that.”

“Stay away from me!” Angela shouted, grabbing the gun with both hands and keeping it pointed squarely at Milverton’s chest. Milverton hesitated for a moment, then moved forward again, backing Angela towards the wall.

“What do you think you’re going to do, Angela? You’re not actually going to use that, you don’t have the stomach for it. If you didn’t want your husband to see those dirty texts you sent to his brother you shouldn’t have written them in the first place.”

“You bastard.”

“Let me tell you what’s going to happen,” Milverton said, now only inches away from the barrel of the gun. “You’re going to give me that gun, and you’re going to _beg_ me to take your sorry arse back, you filthy wh--”

The gun went off with a blast that sounded loud to even John’s trained ears. Milverton stumbled backwards, as if drunk. John saw the bullet had hit directly over his heart. Unsurprising, given the close range. And still they remained hidden inside the closet, even after Milverton’s body hit the floor, and the woman ran out of the room. As she left, John finally recognized her as the woman he had bumped into earlier on the sidewalk, who had likely followed Milverton all day, waiting for her opportunity.

Finally, after the front door had slammed shut and quiet was restored upon the house, Sherlock nudged John forward and together they stepped out of the closet.

“We must move quickly, a neighbor will have heard the gunshot,” Sherlock said, stepping over the dead body on the ground and snatching Milverton’s mobile from the nightstand.

“Shouldn’t we call the police or something?”

“And explain that we just happened to be hiding inside Milverton’s closet when it happened?”

“Fair point. But it doesn’t seem right to just leave him here, or to let her go free.”

“Sometimes, John, justice is not always on the law’s side.”

They quickly left the house just as the faint wail of sirens could be heard in the distance. Walking quickly, they hailed a cab which took them straight to the Thames. In minutes, they were looking out over the river.

“Will this really end it all?” John asked.

“You heard Milverton yourself,” Sherlock said. “Everything he has is on this phone. Without it, he no longer has any power over others.”

“Did you--”

“Even if I knew the password, I wouldn’t look at the secrets on this phone. Some things are best left unknown. Even Milverton’s true identity will die with him.”

And without further ado, Sherlock flung the phone into the river. It landed in the water with a soft splash that neither of them could hear. As the ripples vanished into the current, John couldn’t help feeling somewhat unsatisfied.  “What’s wrong?” Sherlock asked, observant as ever.

“I dunno. I guess I just expected something . . . else. Just feels a bit anti-climatic.”

“Not every case can end in an epic chase or shoot-out. Or with me rescuing you from danger at the last moment.”

“I don’t need saving _that_ often.”

“Kidnapped by the Chinese mafia, abducted by ‘Jim from accounting’--”

“Oh like I haven’t bailed you out plenty of times. Remember the taxi driver? The Golem?”

“--transported against your free will by my brother on _multiple_ occasions. Not to mention all those boring evenings with other people I rescued you from.”

“You mean my social life?”

“Please don’t insult me with the notion that you would rather be sitting in a dirty, crowded movie theater that smells perpetually of popcorn than chasing down criminals with me.”

“Sod you, I still haven’t seen _Inception_ because of that.”

“An absolute waste of time. Christopher Nolan is deluded if he thinks that script came even close to touching upon the enigmatic and entrancing.”

“When did you see it?”

“Remember when I asked you to interview the baker’s widow for the “Gingerbread Man” case?”

“You bastard, you told me you were too busy to interview her yourself!”

They bickered for the entire walk home and John felt that things at last might be returning to normal. Well, as normal as things ever were with them.

“So, now that your secret is safe again, are you going to remain dead?” John asked as they reached Baker Street.

“Hardly. I’ve no reason to stay dead any longer and it’s such a limiting condition. I’ll probably give Lestrade a call tomorrow, he can handle it from there. Or maybe I’ll just get a Twitter account, could be fun.”

“People are going to go insane over this. Sure you don’t want a nice, quiet lifestyle while you’ve still got the chance?”

Sherlock looked back with his hand on the door to 221.

“I can’t think of anything that sounds less appealing than a quiet lifestyle. What would I do instead, keep bees?”

“I can’t exactly picture that,” John said, as they stepped inside. “Can you imagine, you, retired to a cottage in the countryside keeping--”

“Oh my goodness.”

Sherlock and John froze halfway up the stairs and looked down to see Mrs. Hudson standing in the foyer, staring up at Sherlock, her mouth agape and her eyes bulging out of her head.

“You forgot to let her know you were back,” John said.

“Slipped my mind,” Sherlock replied.

“Shall I call an ambulance?”

“She’s not going to have a heart attack, John. I would instead advise you to cover your ears.”

And Sherlock, John thought as Mrs. Hudson let out a screech that was surely heard by the Queen over at Buckingham Palace, as usual, was right.


End file.
